\ 



POPULAE LECTURES 



02^ 



'THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 



DELIVERED IN VARIOUS PLACES, 

AND 



ADDEESSED TO THE COMMON PEOPLE. 



BY 

THE EEV. JOHN GUMMING, D.D., F.E.S.E, 



" But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you 
than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." — Galat. i. 8. 



LONDON: 

EICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BUELINGTON STEEET. 
1861. 



S: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET. 



P E E F A C E. 



These Lectures consist mainly of a plain exposure of 
the inconsistencies, illogical reasonings, and unscrip- 
tural assertions of Tlie Essays and Ee views." They 
have interested and instructed many, as given from 
pulpit or platform. Numbers have requested their 
appearance in print. They are, accordingly, pre- 
sented just as reported. They may, by God's bless- 
ing, guard the thoughtless many from the seductive 
and soul-destroying errors of what may be justly 
called the destructive theology. . 



London, June 6, 1861. 



CONTENTS. 

LECTURE I. PAGE 
The Sacred Scriptures . • . . • . 1 

LECTURE II. 

Doctrines Denied 23 

LECTURE IIL 

The Mosaic Cosmogony 47 

LECTURE jy. 

Misinterpretations » . , , . . .73 
LECTURE y. 

Inspiration . . / . , . . .101 

LECTURE yi. 

What is the Atonement? 120 

LECTURE yiL 

Another Gospel, 148 

LECTURE yin. 

What is the Bible 168 



THE SACRED SCRIPTUEES. 

Certain divines have fastened on some things hard 
to be understood, and have turned them into positive 
and absolute absurdities. These divines are minis- 
ters of a Church whose Articles are pre-eminently 
Protestant — whose martyrs and reformers have been 
among the most illustrious. No impartial person 
can fail to recognize gTeat piety in many of her 
Bishops, great learning in many of her presbyters. 
The Essays and Eeviews do not contain Church of 
England doctrine. The book, however, has become 
not celebrated, for that belongs to excellence, but 
pre-eminently notorious. Unitarian ministers are 
reading it from their pulpits, and boasting that the 
Church of England is coming over to them. The 
Bishops of that Church have met to consider, and as 
a body have condemned it. They have unanimously 
denounced the book ; it would seem also to be their 
duty to depose the writers of it. If Bishops of the 
Church of England cannot turn men out of the Church 

B 



I 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



of England wlio teacli under its venerable shelter 
tlie deadliest scepticism and infidelity, who sap and 
"Undermine its distinctive and its precious truths, it 
is time they had this power at least. Let an officer 
neglect his duty ; a court-martial sits on him at once, 
and he is cashiered. Let a naval officer lose his 
ship ; a coui-t-martial is held, and he is either dis- 
missed, or reprimanded, or he is honourably acquitted. 
In these services there is effective discipline. Why 
should the Church have less power? There is no 
persecution in such discipline ; if a man belongs to a 
Church, let him preach its doctrines; if he cannot 
preach its doctrines, let him leave the Church, and 
join another more congenial to his taste. 

The second Essay is written by Dr. Williams, of 
Lampeter College, an institution, I presume, for 
educating young men for the Christian ministr3\ 
We shall find in it a series of remarks made by him 
on some things '* hard to be understood," but by him 
intentionally or ignorantly wrested, I will not say to 
his own destruction, because one hopes he may live 
to renounce them and repent, but most surely to the 
destruction of those that accept them. For instance, 
he says, The traditions of Babylon, Sidon, Assyria, 
and Iran, are brought by our author " (Bunsen) " to 
illustrate and confirm, though to modify our interpi e- 
tation of Genesis !" Why should any modification 
of interpretation arise from any external source ? 



THE SACRED SCPaPTURES. 



Exegesis here is everytliing. Extei'nal opinions are 
notliing. He says, " Our deluge takes its place among 

geological plienomena, no longer a disturbance of 
**law from wliicli science shrinks, but a prolonged 
*' play of the forces of fire and water, rendering the 

primaBval regions of Xortli Asia uninhabitable, 
*'and urging the nations to new abodes." Such is 
his account of the Deluge. Does it coincide with 
the sacred record ? T\'e ask any plain Christian to 
open his Bible. Is it not there expressly asserted, 

I, even I, do bring a flood ?" He opened the foun- 
tains of the great deep ; He opened the windows of 
heaven. It was inflicted by God as a penalty for sin. 
It was confessedly miraculous ; but this w^riter takes 
it out of the region of the miraculous ; and says it 
was no longer a miraculous disturbance of the laws, 
but merely a prolonged play of the forces of nature 
which cause, he says, urged the nations to new^ 
" abodes." Was this last the result of the flood ? The 
w^riter surely has mistaken his history ; he should 
be sent back to school ; it was not the Deluge that 
drove people to new abodes, but the confusion of 
tongues at the tower of Babel. He has mixed up 
two distinct things in his imagination. He was so 
anxious to explain a miracle, not as the act of Deity, 
but as an ordinary phenomenon, that he has con- 
founded the facts of history, in order to make good 
the conclusions of his fancy. He talks in another 



1 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



place of The half-ideal, half-traditional notices of 
" the beginning of our race, compiled in Genesis." 
This language is incompatible with any belief in the 
inspiration of Genesis. It is to him a mythological 
story. He tell ns, at page 59, that, "the pestilence 
of the Book of Kings becomes in Chronicles the 
more visible angel ; so the avenger who slew the 
" first-born may have been the Bedouin host, akin 
" nearly to Jethro, and more remotely to Israel." 

AYhat authority has the writer for this nonsense ? 
Let any one read the story of the Passover. An 
angel spread his wings upon the air ; entered every 
house of the Egyptians, smote the first-born in every 
home on whose lintels there was no sprinkled blood ; 
and that night there was lamentation in Egypt. But 
this writer says, it was no judicial angel, no divine 
emissary, it was a host of Bedouins — a raid of 
marauding Arabs ; and these Arabs, or children of 
the desert, were so clever, according to this writer, 
that they knew hj night every house on the lintels 
of which there was no sprinkled blood ; and they 
could distinguish, marvellous sagacity ! the instant 
they entered a house, which was the first-born, infant 
or adult; and the father or mother were so little 
anxious about their child that they stood by and 
allowed a raid of Arabs to come in and take up the 
child and barbarously kill it ; the father and mother 
"made no resistance, they gave up their child and sat 



THE SACRED SCRIPTUEES. 



3 



still, and wrung their hands, and uttered lamentation 
and wailing. Is it possible to accept this as the true 
history of the transaction ? Is it common sense ? 
Is it a credible solution ? Is it not the grander, the 
more consistent, account which Scripture gives, that 
the angel of the Lord, sent from above, entered each 
home, and executed in secrecy and silence that 
mysterious judgment, which had its meaning and its 
mission also. om hay; tyhBefi '- 

The writer, speaking of the Pentateuch, says — 
ir- It is doubtful whether the Pentateuch be of one age 
1* and of one hand ; and whether subsequent books 

are cotemporary with the events ; and whether 
fUhere be not traces of editorship in the Pentateuch, 
>!^ if not of composition, between the ages of Solomon 

and of Hezekiah." 
1 There seems, according to Dr. Williams, to have 
^een an editor superintending the Pentateuch, not an 
inspired writer, as we in our old-fashioned way have 
been accustomed to believe. We know there is an 
editor of the Times, but we never heard of an editor 
of the Bible. But perhaps there is a great truth in 
this : God himself is the Editor of the Bible ; He in- 
spired it ; he arranged it ; Moses was his amanuensis ; 
knd the suggestion of this writer may mean w^hat he 
Cidid not imagine, and would perhaps despise. 

When he tells us in another page of that sublime 
scene in which Abraham was ordered to sacrifice 



6 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



Isaac, liow does lie explain it? ''Yriieii the fierce 
" ritual of Syria, with the avre of a Divine voice, 
bade Abraham slay his son." If we turn to the 
chapter, v^'e find it begins very differently : And 
God said. Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, 
whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of 
Moriah ; and offer him there for a burnt-offering 
upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."' 
And so real is the typical application of this fact that 
the beautiful text rings in the memory of the dying 
like the sweetest music : " God so loved the world 
" that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
** believeth in him should tiot perish." The Dean of 
Canterbury makes a just criticism on this text from 
the third chapter of the Gospel of St. John. He 
says, " The text in the third chapter of St. John is 
'* clearly Abrahamic that is, it is the lang-uage of 
God to Abraham about Isaac applied to the death of 
Jesus ; and as Isaac was to be offered as a sacrifice, 
so, argues the Dean of Canterbury with great force, 
the death of Jesus was a sacrifice. Dr. Williams 
next gives us intelligence marvellously new ; he says, 
there was a Bible before our Bible : " Some of the 
*' books, as certainly Genesis and Joshua ; and per- 
haps Job, Jonah, Daniel, are expanded from 
" simpler elements." The character of this writer is 
veiy peculiar; he does not argue; he does not pro- 
duce facts ; but he throws out those wicked and 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 7 



baseless insinuations tliat lodge in weak people's 
hearts, and create doubts, where confidence and 
faith are duty, safety, and peace. His theory is, there 
was a Bible before our Bible. Y^hat is the right 
way of refuting this ? It is not our business to prove 
the negative ; it is his duty to prove the affirmative. 
Produce the Bible ; show us this pre- Adamite Bible, 
this ante-Deluge Bible ; this marvellous petrifaction 
of which ours is but a transcript. iS^obody ever heard 
of it till Dr. Williams affii^med it. I do not believe 
anybody else ever thought of it. It is marvellous 
that a Professor of Divinity, in a College, should 
italk such nonsense ; and try to impose it upon 
L Christian men as able Biblical exegesis and scriptural 
criticism. Speaking of Chevalier Bunsen, he pro- 
iceeds to say : " Bunsen rightly rejects the perversions 
*' which make the cursing Psalms evangelically 
" inspii^ed." Then there are certain Psalms of 
David that are not inspired ; and he says the reason 
why they are not inspired is that they are " cursing 
Psalms." But you will observe, the ground on 
which we accept the inspiration of a book in the Bible 
is that it was held by the Jews ; that it is quoted as 
inspired in other portions of the Bible ; that it has 
been handed down from age to age, and that we have 
evidence, external and internal, that it was inspired. 
But are they cursing Psalms ? Why does he call 
them by this obnoxious epithet? They are not 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



cursing Psalms. If those Psalms be poems composed 
by an uninspired individual, fulminating wrath at 
those who had offended him, thej are justly called 
cursing Psalms. But he might as well say that the 
judgment-seat is a place of cursing, because God 
says, "Depart from me, ye cursed;" you might as 
well say, when God denounces punishment on the 
Jews, it is cursing Scripture. Dayid spoke not as 
the son of Jesse, but as the inspired Psalmist of 
Israel ; he pronounced not a private curse, which 
would have been a crime ; he was merely made the 
trumpet and the organ of the judicial sentence of 
Almighty God ; those Psalms that this writer calls 
cursing are simply judicial Psalms; the same God 
that in the one Psalm blesses, in another Psalm, if you 
like to call it so, curses ; but in both cases it is the 
exercise of judicial power by God; and shall not the 
Judge of all the earth do right ? He actually asserts 
and quotes a series of rationalistic and neological 
writers to show, that in all the prophecies of the Old 
Testament there are scarcely discoverable two pre- 
dictions of the Messiah. He says, " When so vast an 
" induction on the destructive side has been gone 
" through, it avails little that some passages may be 
doubtful, one perhaps in Zechariah, and one in 
Isaiah, capable of being made directly Messianic, 
and a chapter possibly in Deuteronomy foreshadow- 
" ing the final fall of JeiTisalem;" but that with the 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



exception of these there is not a prophecy in the 
Bible of anything to occur in the future ; and that 
no prophecy relates to what is future at all. He says, 
In our own country each successive defence of the 
" prophecies in proportion as its author was able, 
detracted something from the extent of literal prog- 
nostication ; and either lay stress on the moral 
element, or urged a second as the spiritual sense." 
What does all this mean ? That the prophecies are 
merely moral lessons, not even ins]3ired, as he after- 
wards intimates ; and that there are not twelve 
passages in the Old Testament, according to Bishop 
Chandler, directly Messianic ; and others have even 
restricted them to five ; and Dr. Williams restricts 
them to two. He says, " Coleridge, in a suggestive 
letter, preserved in the Memoirs of Cary, the 
" translator of Dante, threw secular prognostications 
" altogether out of the idea of prophecy;" in other 
words, that you have no event, or phenomenon, or 
fact in history, predicted hundreds of years before its 
occurrence, in prophecy. Now, I ask, can Dr. 
W^illiams have overlooked such a statement as this : 
To Christ gave all the prophets witness?" Christ 
was a fact, a person; his birth occurred 600 years 
after Isaiah. Him the prophets predict. Dr. 
W^illiams blunders, or the New Testament is false- 
hood ; it asserts, " To Christ gave all the prophets 
witness ;" and prophecy of old came not by any 



10 



TEE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



private interpretation, but if Scripture is truth, " Holy 
men of God spake as they were moved by the 5oly 
Ghost." In fact, if there be not in Old Testament 
prophecy clear and distinct predictions of events, and 
phenomena, and persons and incidents to come, one 
of the great pillars on which Christianity rests for 
its claim as a revelation from God is utterly shattered. 
But the proofs of prophecy in the Old Testament, 
translated into facts in the Is ew, are so many that 
one wonders at this assertion. 

We know that the prophecies in the Old Tes- 
tament are full of the facts of the New; and that 
echo does^ not answer more emphatically to sound 
than the facts of the Gospel answer to the pro- 
phecies contained in the Old Testament Scriptures ; 
but we shall come to some of these by and by. 
Dr. Williams is speaking of Isaiah ; and seems very 
much puzzled how Isaiah could say things that 
evidently looked, I suppose, in the mind of the 
author, very much like predictions ; and, therefore, 
he makes another discovery, worthy of the previous 
one, that there was a sort of pre- Adamite Bible ; — 
he makes the discovery that there were two Isaiahs ; 
that the younger Isaiah wrote one part, and the elder 
Isaiah wrote the other part ; he is not kind enough 
to give us a single argument, or a single evidence ; 
nor does he say whether these two were twins, 
brothers, or cousins. It is easy to fling forth violent 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



11 



objections, but it is not so easy to sbow the fonnda- 
tion on which, they rest. He may say what he pleases ; 
but we should not forget we are reasonable ; we have 
judgments, and retentive memories, and access to 
facts and the power of comparison ; we will not take 
the ipse dixit of the most illustrious professor in 
Christendom ; we must have argument ; we must 
have fact ; we must have evidence. This writer is 
fond of strange and extravagant statements ; for he 
sees not only two Isaiahs,, but, being puzzled how to 
exjjlain Zechariah, he discovers that there ai'e two 
distinct Zechariahs — a younger as well as an elder ; 
but again he does not indulge the anxious inquirer 
with a single proof that there were two Zechariahs ; 
and, therefore, how he makes out that marvellous 
discovery except by seeing double it is impossible to 
ascertain. To show now, that prophecies heretofore 
plainly applied have no meaning, he adduces evi- 
dence : one instance is from Psalm xxxiv. , where it 
is said, "He keepeth all his bones ; not one of them 
** is broken." " But," he says, " the reader must feel 
** a difficulty in detaching this from the context, so as 
" to make it a prophecy of the Ciaicifixion." I feel no 
difficulty at all; because the inspired evangelist 
distinctly says, These things were done, that the 
Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not 
be broken." Concerning the passage, "They pierced 
my hands and my feet," he alleges it is quite plain 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 

that the true reading is different; instead of 
pierced," it should be ''like a lion;" " and this 
" corresponds sufficiently -with the ' dogs ' of the first 
" clause." But he does not say what critics give this 
new reading. What can be his reason for this new, 
we add, fanciful reading ? Because the expression, 
" They pierced my hands and my feet," in the 
Psalm, looks like a prediction of what should occur 
in the experience of Jesus ; and as it is so plain that 
it would be very difficult to translate it into the 
opposite, he invents, or rakes up a new reading to 
answer his purpose, in order to prove that this 
prophecy was not fulfilled at the crucifixion of 
Christ. He draws on his imagination for readings ; 
and goes on to say, *' Fresh from the services of 
" Christmas the Christian may sincerely exclaim, 
" ' Unto us a child is born;' but he knows that 
" the Hebrew, translated Mighty God^ is at least dis- 
" putable." It is not disputable; it is precise and 
accurate. He says of " the Mighty God, that per- 
" haps it means only Strong and Mighty One, 
" Father of an Age ; and he can never listen to 
" any one who pretends that the Maiden's Child of 
" Isaiah vii. 16, was not to be bom in the reign of 
'' Ahaz, as a sign against the Kings Pekah and 
" Eezin." t^tmU exnoa xn* 

iS ow, this would be very plausible, if it did not, 
unfortunately for this logician, happen that the 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



inspired Matthew distinctly declares that at the birth 
of Jesus this prophecy was fulfilled : "A virgin 

shall conceive, and bear a child." But he will not 
take Matthew's testimony to be worth anything as 
long as he can pnrsue what he calls his " induction 

on the destructive side," that leaves only two 
passages in the Old Testament that are capable 
of being construed as Messianic or referring to the 
Messiah. I may here add a remark on his state- 
ment, which he repeats, about the two Isaiahs. At 
the very opening chapter of the book of the prophet 
Isaiah, it is written, The vision," not of the two 
Isaiahs, the elder and the younger, but " the vision of 
'' Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning 

Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of TJzziah, 
'' Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah." During that period 
one Isaiah lived ; during that period one Isaiah pro- 
phesied; and there is no evidence of another or a 
successor. 

But the most marvellous perversion, I think, of 
Scripture, and it seems to me the most wicked, which 
it is difficult to explain or justify, except on the 
supposition that the mind of Dr. Williams must have 
been infected by some deadly poison exhaled from 
the swamps of the rationalistic portions of Germany, 
or from some Unitarian writings, occurs where he 
takes the 53rd of Isaiah, and explains it thus : Who 
'' was this servant that had foretold the exile and the 



14 



THE SACRED SCRlPTUPvES. 



retiu'n, and had been a man of grief, rejected of his 
*' people, imprisoned and treated as a malefactor? 
" The oldest Jewish tradition, preserved in Origen, 
and to be inferred from Justin, said the chosen 
people — in opposition to heathen oppressors— an 
" opinion which suits cb. xlix. 3." Then, after some 
further remarks, he says, The first Jewish ex- 
" positor who loosened, without breaking Eabbinical 
" fetters, E. Saadiah, in the 9th century, named 
" Jeremiah as the man of grief, and emphatically the 
prophet of the return, rejected of his people. 
Baron Bunsen puts together, with masterly analysis, 
" the illustrative passages of Jeremiah; and it is 
difficult to resist the conclusion to which they 
tend." I have gone over very carefully the 
references he gives to prove it is a history of 
Jeremiah. He says Jeremiah was the man that was 
led as a lamb to the slaughter. In the o3rd of 
Isaiah, we read, He is brought as a lamb to the 
" slaughter, and as a "sheep before her shearers is 
" dumb, so he openeth not his mouth." If he wishes 
to show that Jeremiah is the personage described 
here, he must not pick out bits, or as much as suits 
his purpose, and leave out the paragraphs that won't 
dovetail with the rest of his story : he must take all. 
The statement in Isaiah is,- He is brought as a 
lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her 
shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth." 



THE SACRED SCRirXCRES. 



15 



Now the passage he quotes as evidence that Jere- 
miah is the person spoken of is this ; Jei'emiah xi. 19. 
" I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the 
" slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised 
" devices against me." Here he stops, but let us help 
Dr. AVilliams to read on. Did. Jeremiah " open not 
his mouth ?" the 53id of Isaiah says " he opened not 
his mouth;" but this will not answer to Jeremiah ; 
for Jeremiah, while he was led as a sheep or as an ox 
to the slaughter, instead of not opening his mouth 
opened it very wide ; for he pronounces very em- 
phatically in the next verse, " Let me see thy 
" vengeance on them ; for unto thee have I revealed 
" my cause." 

This last shows that the passage does not apply ; 
yet he refers to this passage for evidence that Jere- 
miah exactly corresponds ; but when you turn to 
the passage you find it does not fully correspond in 
two particulars, and in the third it presents a feature 
just the opposite ; instead of not opening his mouth 
he imprecates vengeance or retribution upon them 
that were leading; him as a lamb or ox to the slauo;h- 
ter. Dr. AYilliams quotes another passage in the 
experience of Jeremiah, which, he says, identifies 
that prophet as the subject of Isaiah 53rd. At the 
close of the 53rd of Isaiah it is said, " he made 
" intercession for the transgressors ;" or, as Dr. "Wil- 
liams renders it, "he interceded for his people in 



16 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



" prayer and lie quotes Jeremiali xviii. 20, where, 
lie says, you will find the proof that he is the person 
who interceded for his people in prayer. Xow let 
us see if Jeremiah did so. I turn to the very passage 
that Dr. AYilliams summons me to investigate. Did 
J eremiah intercede for his people ? You shall hear 
what sort of intercession it was : " Therefore, de- 
" liver up their children to the famine, and pour out 
" their blood by the force of the sword; and let 
" their wives be bereaved of their childreuj and be 
widows ; and let their men be put to death ; 
" let their vouns; men be slain bv the sword in 
*' battle." Is that interceding for the people? Is 
not this directly the reverse of interceding for ti'ans- 
gressors ? Dr. Williams must have presumed that 
his readers would take a gTeat deal on trust, and 
believe that he quotes texts of Scripture correctly as 
well as quotes facts from history ; and that they 
would not investigate the veiy passages to which he 
refers. Taking his references — and he gives about 
twenty at the foot of page 73 — to which he appeals 
in order to prove that the 53rd of Isaiah is a descrij^- 
tion of the character, the conduct, the person, the 
suiferings of Jeremiah the prophet, I want no more 
damaging disproof of what he says. Those very pas- 
sages that he himself appeals to, and bids me investi- 
gate, refute his assertions. Take that 53rd of Isaiah, 
and read the life of any man that ever lived, from 



THE SACEED SCRIPTURES. 



17 



Adam downward to Xapoleon the Third ; and I defy 
yon to find ont any bnt One of whom it is a photo- 
graphic portrait, that is the Lord Jesns Chiist; 
there is not another individnal in history to whom it 
is applicable. But suppose we had no such over- 
whelming evidence we have other evidence that to a 
Christian mind is conclusive. A chief ruler was 
journeying through the desert, and was reading 
the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, not believing that it 
described Jeremiah, but not sure to whom it related ; 
Philip, full of the Holy Ghost, with a great deal of 
courtesy and kindness, speaks to the prime minister, 
who was not ashamed to ask a question about its 
ongin and application. Of whom does the prophet 

speak, of himself, or of another?'' ^Thy, if it had 
been so plainly descriptive of Jeremiah, you would 
have thought a proselyte of that day would have 
Imown it. Then " of whom does he speak, of 

himself or of another?" Having asked Philip to 
come up in his chariot, Philip preached to him 
Jesus. In other words, the 53rd of Isaiah, according 
to an inspired evangelist, elected to be a deacon 
because he was a man full of the Holy Ghost, is the 
portrait of the great Sacrifice, of the Prince of Peace, 
the Son of God. 

Dr. ^Yilliams refers to another of the prophets ; 
for he does not spare any one of them : it is mar- 
vellous how he can read them in the reading desk ; 



18 



THE SACRED SCPJPTUEES. 



it must be a lieavy penance for liim to be constrained 
to read writings which he has no confidence in, 
which he believes to be mere compilations or 
abstracts of some Bible that existed before the flood. 
He tuiTLS to Jonah ; and what does he say of him ? 
" It provokes a smile on serions topics to observe 

the zeal -with which our critic vindicates the per- 
" sonality of Jonah." He does not believe Jonah 
was a person, and his hymn, he does not believe to 
be original. Jonah's sublime hymn he says is gene- 
rally doubted : now I never heard it was doubted 
by anybody till I read his doubts on it ; while he 
proceeds to explain that the narrative of the book, 

in which the hymn is embodied, contains a late 

legend, founded on misconception." Such is his 
picture of Jonah. Is that compatible with the 
passage that fell from the lips of our Blessed Lord 
while speaking of this very subject, the prophet 
Jonah? for what does he say? " This generation 

requires a sign ; but no other sign shall be given 
" to it than the sign of the prophet Jonah; for as 
" Jonah was three days and three nights in the 
" whale's belly ; so shall the Son of man be three 

days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 
" The men of Xineveh shall rise in judgment with 

this generation, and shall condemn it, because 

they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, 
'• behold, a greater than Jonah is here." Does not 



THE SACEED SCRIPTURES. 



19 



our Blessed Lord there regard Jonah as an historic 
person ? Does he not speak of his preaching as a 
fact ? Does he not speak of his being in the belly 
of the whale as a fact ? and does he not allude to it 
as an instructive and a suggestive one ? And yet 
Dr. Williams, with the Xew Testament in his hand, 
sworn as a minister of the Church of England to 
accept it as the inspiration of God, dares to say that 
the hymn in Jonah is founded on a misconception, is 
embodied in a legend ; and that it makes one smile, 
he says, to find any one vindicating the personality of 
Jonah! So much for the remarkable contrast be- 
tween his sentiments and the word of God. 

But his great and original idea is, that there is no 
prognostication of events to come in the prophets. 
Let us try to ascertain the actual facts ; Moses said, 
The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Pro- 
phet from the midst of thee, of thy brethr en, like 
unto me ; unto him ye shall hearken." He says no 
prophecy in the Bible is Messianic ; no prophecy is 
the prognostication of a future event. In the Acts 
of the Apostles, these very words are expressly 
quoted as fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. Either 
Luke, the writer of the Acts, told what was false, 
or Dr. Williams has been very bitterly and sadly 
mistaken ; either Luke was inspired, or Dr. Williams 
is inspired ; the evidence of the latter, in his own 
language, " it would provoke a smile to discuss 



?9 



THE SACEED SCEIPTURES. 



tlie evidence of the former is irresistible, for he 
spake, as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. AVe 
read in Psalm cxviii., " The stone which the builders 
" refused is become the head stone of the corner;" 
that is quoted in the Epistle to the Ephesians by 
Paul, and in the First Epistle of Peter by Peter. 
These two inspired writers surely knew better than 
Dr. Williams ; and if they were not inspired writers, 
living 1800 years ago, in contact with the universal 
impression what the Bible meant, they must have 
been more competent judges as to whom the pro- 
j)hecies refer than the Eev. Dr. Williams. There is 
another passage : " The Lord hath anointed me to 
" preach good tidings unto the meek ; he hath sent me 

to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty 
" to the captives, and the opening of the prison to 

them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable 
" year of the Lord." Of course Dr. Williams holds 
that is not the prognostication of a future event ; it 
is merely a spiritual truth, to be morally explained 
and understood. But the great Master, who spake 
as never man spake, from whose lips fell words of 
truth, settles alike the ignorance of Dr. Williams 
and the fact involved. In the 4th chapter of the 
Gospel according to St. Luke, at the 18th verse, ho 
says, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your 
" ears." Which therefore is credible, the romance of 
Dr. Williams or the word of God ? 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



21 



On tlie Apocalypse lie offers a very strange remark ; 
he says, " The Apocalypse, if taken as a series of 
*' poetical visions, which represent the outpouring 
of the vials of wrath upon the city where the Lord 
was slain, ceases to be a riddle." But, strange his- 
torian is this Dr. Williams, how could the Apoca- 
lyptic prophecy pour out vials of wrath upon 
Jerusalem, the city where Christ was slain, after 
J erusalem was destroyed ? Yet this learned Doctor 
tells us the Apocalypse was woe denounced upon 
Jerusalem, when Jerusalem had ceased to exist ; it 
had been ploughed up by order of Titus, and of its 
temple, not one stone was left upon another. " Then 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, so different in its 
" conception of faith, and in its Alexandiine rhythm, 
" from the doctrine and the language of St. Paul's 
"' known Epistles, has its degree of discrepance 
" explained by ascribing it to some companion of 
" the Apostle ; and minute reasons are found for 
" fixing with probability on ApoUos." 

" The second of the Pe trine Epistles, having alike, 
external and internal evidence against its genuine- 
ness, is necessarily surrendered as a whole." 
These are baseless assertions. Be not alarmed, 
people of England, about the issue of a controversy 
now begun. And rest assured, let the discussion 
come when it may, and it will come, and is growing 
rapidly, and each will have to take his stand, there 



22 



THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. 



is no fear for the truth of God. The Bible rests 
upon an immoveable foundation; it bears upon its 
very face the imprimatur of God. You may be 
alarmed when that which is based on man shakes 
and tilts; but you need not be alarmed lest that 
be shaken or moved which has God for its author, 
truth for its matter, and the eternal happiness of 
man for its blessed issue. " Thy word is truth," is 
an aphorism 1800 years old, but as fresh to-day as 
it was when first pronounced. The time was when 
men trembled at the sarcasms of Voltaire ; and 
winced under the searching and brilliant criticism of 
Eousseau ; or listened with dismay to the severe 
and subtle metaphysics of Hume ; but the objections 
of these men were all met and scattered at the time. 
Dr. Williams has raised from the dead, and clothed 
in a new dress, the ghosts of objections long laid, 
and he has palmed them upon the Christians of 
England as if they were brilliant discoveries of 
Lampeter, instead of being the old buried rubbish of 
David Hume, Voltaire, Eousseau, Diderot, and others, 
raised and clad in the garments of the nineteenth 
century. 



23 



II. 

DOCTRINES DENIED. 

The last Essay we liandled is the second in the 
volume, written by Dr. ^Tilliams, the Professor of 
Hebrew in St. David's College, Lampeter, and Vicar 
of Broad Chalke, Wilts. The next we would analyze 
is called " The National Church," by Henry Bristow 
Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton, Hunts. 
Some of his sentiments are not so coarsely stated ; 
but they are equally, I need not say, unscriptural, 
they are equally illogical as those of Dr. Williams, 
his immediate predecessor. 

To give some idea of his sentiments, I will turn to 
the early part of his Essay. He says, at page 154: 
" First, if our traditions tell us that they ' are in- 
"'volved in the curse,' that men are involved in 
"the curse and perdition of Adam, and may justly 
" be punished hereafter individually for his trans- 
"gression, not having been extricated from it by 
" saving faith, we are disposed to think that our 
" traditions cannot herein fairly declare to us the 
"words and inferences from Scripture; but if, on 
*' examination, it should turn out that they have, 
" we must say that the authors of the scriptural 



24 



DOCTRINES DEKIED, 



" books have, in those matters, represented to "as 
" their own inadequate conceptions, and not the 
" mind of the Spirit of God." Here is a grave state- 
ment indeed ; he says, if the transmission of the 
taint of Adam's guilt be a scriptural statement, and 
if it can be proved to be stated in God's holy word, 
his inference is, not what the Protestant would say, 
that he must accept it ; that what he finds in the Bible 
he must bow before as an oracle of heaven, even while 
he cannot comprehend it ; that what he finds in the 
Bible he accepts, even when science seems, for it only 
seems, to contradict it. But this writer substantially 
says. The moment that I find a truth in the Bible 
unpalatable to my taste, unreasonable in the estimate 
of my weak judgment, my inference is not — oh ! con- 
ceited philosopher — that I, Dr. AVilson, very frail 
and ignorant, may possibly be in error ; but that the 
apostles, and prophets, and Moses, have represented 
to us their own inadequate conceptions, and have 
not given us the just expression of the mind of God. 
Such is the reasoning in the commencement of this 
Essay. Any child could get up and say, I don't 
believe the Bible. But intellectual giants cannot 
prove it is not the Word of God. The fact is, Popery 
is vastly more consistent ; it puts up a man called 
the Pope, and it says, That man is infallible, what he 
says is true, is true if everybody contradict it ; and 
what he says is false, is false, if everybody assert it. 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



25 



The Eoman Catholic is most consistent. The Pro- 
testant, on the other hand, is most consistent : the 
Protestant says, This book, called the Bible, is the 
very reflection of the mind, it is the very unspent 
echo of the voice of God; what it says I believe, 
though all men contradict it; what it condemns I 
condemn, though all men applaud it. But Dr. Wilson 
is inconsistent and suicidal, he says, If what it says 
does not suit my taste, if it does not meet my ideas, 
for my reason is the true Po^oe, my conscience is the 
true interpreter, I mnst reject it; I will not bring 
my conscience, my intellect, and my heart, to the 
Bible, but I will bring the Bible to the tribunal of 
my heart, head, and conscience ; if the Bible speak 
not according to it, it is not I that am wrong, says 
this conceited philosopher ; it is the Bible that must 
necessarily be so. ' But he proceeds to find out 
special objections to this blessed book ; and among 
the earliest he discovers and seems to make much 
of the following: "From the same source of the 
" advance of general knowledge respecting the in- 
habit ancy of the world, issues another inquiry 
concerning a promise, prophecy, or assertion of 
Scripture. For the commission of Jesus to his 
" apostles was to preach the Gospel to ' all nations,' 
*''to every creature;' and St. Paul says of the 
"Gentile world, 'But I say, have they not heard? 
" ' Yes, verily, their sound went unto all the earth, 



26 



BOCTEIXES DEXIED. 



" ' and tlieir words unto the ends of the world ' 
"(Eom. X. 18); and speaks of the Gospel 'which 
*''was preached to every nation nnder heaven' 
" (Col. i. 23), when it has never yet "been preached 

even to the half." The apostle Paul does declai'e 
that the Gospel was preached to all the world, 
whereas, says 3Ir. Wilson, it has not been preached 
to half the world. But now let us look at this fairly ; 
what does Jesus say ? Go and preach the Gospel 

to eveiy creature.'*' What is preach ^ Make known 
to every creature the glad tidings. The apostle says 
the Gospel has been preached to every creature : that 
is, its message is for eveiy creature, its testimony is 
announced to eveiy creature, and it is designed and 
meant that every creature should enjoy it. The 
prescription is for all : and the testimony is to be 
made known to all. But it cannot reach every unit 
of the human race in a day. for instance, you pro- 
claim to the heads of a regiment, if a regiment has 
revolted, there is a pardon ; the jDardon was pro- 
claimed to all : yet it is only the officers that heard 
it in the fiist instance, not the whole regiment. So 
in the case of a revolted province, the Crown sends a 
message of amnesty to that province ; that message 
of amnesty is j^roclaimed to all : but it is in the first 
instance sent only to the officers or representatives, 
but secondarily, thi'ough them to every individual. 
So the Gospel at this moment is an amnesty pro- 



DOCTRINES DEXIEP. 



27 



claimed to and available for the T^ hole world ; it has 
been addressed to the whole world en masse, and 
by and by every individual in that w^orld will hear 
it. There is no contradiction, except in the diseased 
fancy of the commentator npon the passage. 

He next speaks of that glorious and precions 
doctrine, Justification by Taith ; he says, "It is 
" customary with Lutherans to represent their- doc- 
trine of justification by subjective faith as ha^fing 
died out shortly after the Apostolic age. In fact, 
it never was the doctrine of any considerable por- 
tion of the Church till the time of the Eeformation. 
It is not met with in the immediately post-Apostolic 
" writings, nor in the Apostolic writings he has 
the good sense to add — for veiy shame must make 
him add — a very valuable exception, except those 
''of St. Paul;" and when we consider that those of 
St. Paul fill nearly half the Xew Testament, it is a 
sti^ange way of disproving the scriptural foundation 
of this doctrine to say it is not found in the New 
Testament, exce^^t only in one half of it ; that is, in 
the writings of St. Paul; then he says, not even in 
" the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is of the Pauline 
"or Paulo-Johannean school,'*' as he calls it: and 
therefore, as he thinks, this doctrine of justification 
by faith is not a Scriptui'al doctrine, ^^'hat is his 
answer, I wonder, to the question, How shall man 
be just with God ? ^Yhat would be his prescription 



28 



DOCTEINES DENIED. 



to tliat weiglity inqniry, what must I do to be saved ? 
Take the cross from the Bible, and it is denuded of 
its central light, its harmony, its consistency, its 
value. Take justification by faith alone in the 
righteousness of Christ from the heart of the Chris- 
tian Church, and the anchors of our faith are lifted ; 
we are at sea in a hurricane; we have no chart; 
there is not a star in the sky, nor a taper on the 
shore, that can point to us that haven in which we 
can find shelter. But the best answer to what he 
says is our inquiry, What is your proof for that 
assertion ? He does not condescend to give proof. 
Three-fourths of his charges against the Bible are 
pure assertions, and nothing else. But if I were to 
assert that there are no stars in the sky, and no grass 
on the earth, my assertion would not prove it; if I 
were to tell you that St. Paul's Cathedral has fallen 
down, and is in ruins, you would not believe it, un- 
less I gave authentic evidence, or testimony, or proof 
of some sort. But these men make bold, I may 
venture to call them impudent assertions, for which 
they assign no foundation, which they trace to no 
original; the whole strength of which is just the 
force and ferocity with which they assert them. I 
gave you instances of that in the case of Dr. Williams f 
he says there was a Bible before our Bible was ever 
written. One would suppose he must have picked 
up some relic of it that had been drifted down by the 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



29 



flood ; or that lie must have detected some page of it 
in tlie great geological epochs, and in some of the 
petrifactions which are constantly exposed to light ; 
but he does not give one item of proof of his asser- 
tion ; he does not condescend to give one single hint 
of anything discovered that would point to such a 
monstrous conclusion ; it is a bare assertion, nothing 
more. Then he asserts there were two Isaiahs ; but 
we can only find one in the Bible. ^Yhere does he 
find the second ? He does not tell us. So he tells 
us there were two Zechariahs ; we find one in the 
Bible. Where does he find the second ? Xow, can 
a work be of any weight which consists of ipse dixits, 
and spurns logic ; and when it touches logic, proves 
the very opposite of that to which he wants his 
reasoning to tend ? Dr. Wilson, in another portion 
of this volume, speaking of the reasoning of the 
Apostle Paul upon the resurrection, says, First, he 
represents the rising to life again, not as miraculous 
or exceptional, but as a law of humanity, or at 
least of Christian and spiritualised humanity ; and 
" he treats the resuiTection of Christ, not as a won- 
der, but as a prerogative instance;" that is, the 
resurrection of the body, he says, is a natural phe- 
nomenon ; and that it is as much natural for the 
body to rise again as it is for the body to die. But 
where does he discover this ? Certainly not in the 
Bible ; for we read that instead of being the law of 



30 



DOCTRIXES DEXIED. 



onr being, it is the miracle that crowns it, — the 
trnmpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise ;'' 
instead of being the ordinary law, we read that all 
*'that are in their gi^aves shall — " what? rise again 
as the natnral order of things? Xo ; but shall 
hear the voice of the Son of Man; and they that 
''hear his voice shall rise;" and "we shall all 
" stand," again it is said, "at the judgment-seat of 
" Christ." It is supernatural and miraculous. For 
instance, the grass grows, but no trumpet sounds the 
approaching footsteps of spring ; the fmit ripens, 
but no voice from God says, Eipen thou fruit, that 
there may be plenty for the refi^eshment of man : 
the harvest comes, when nature sits amid her golden 
sheaves, like a mother amid her children, rejoicing 
and praising God : here is the ordinary action of 
things, it is the general but not the special inter- 
position of Divinity. But in the case of the resm*- 
rection there is a special and sudden interposition, 
the trumpet sounds, Christ speaks; and instead of 
being the law of humanity, the existing law of 
humanity is death spiritual, death moral, death 
physical, death for ever ; and the interruption of 
the continuity of that law is by the direct and 
supernatural interposition of the Lawgiver; " Eise, 
"ye dead, and come to judgment." It is therefore 
a miraculous ; not a natural and ordinary pheno- 
menon. 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



31 



After he iias stated some very strong things, he 
makes a ^ery convenient remark, which I suppose is 
meant for the bishops of the Church to Tvhich he 
belongs. He says, " They who caused divisions and 

heresies were to be marked and avoided, but not 
*' expelled that is to say, if we apply it in modem 
times to men that preach monstrous errors, he 
would not mind being marked, he would not mind 
being avoided, but he would not like to lose his 
living. He adds, " And if any called a brother were 

a notoriously immoral person, the rest were en- 
" joined not to eat with Mm which I suppose he 
thought was no great disadvantage to himself ; but,*' 
he says, he was not to be refused the name of 

brother, or Christian.'*' AYhy, what is the mark of 

Christian ? — Christianity. ^Vhat is the veiy es- 
sence of Chiistianity ? — doing justly, loving mercy, 
walking humbly with God. T\'hat is the command 
of an apostle ? That they are to cut off, and to ex- 
communicate the depraved and immoral person ; and 
to plead for the Church of Christ being a congeries 
of Socinians, of Papists, of Tractarians, of Infidels ; 
and to expand what he adds of immoral persons also, 
is to plead for it being a cage of every unclean bird, 
and so ripe for the judgments of heaven. It is not 
ours to search the heart : but where a man is openly 
profligate, notoriously immoral, I say it is the duty 
of the iTilers of the Church of Christ, whether bishops 



32 



DOCTRIXES DENIED. 



or presb}i:ers, to remove him, if lie refuse to remove 
himself ; or if a man subscribe the Articles of a 
Church — and no Articles are more Protestant than 
those of the Church of England — and sap and under- 
mine everj' Article of that Church, by the most mis- 
chievous and flagrant scepticism; then, I say, the 
authorities are not doing their duty, if they have the 
23ower, when they do not expel such a man. It is 
not persecution to do so. 

He then proceeds to touch upon another point. 
*' It has been matter of great boast within the Church 
of England, in common with other Protestant 
Churches, that it is founded upon the AYord of 
God;" and it is a noble boast; "a phrase which 
begs many a question;" now here is the serpent 
coming in ; "a phrase which begs many a question, 
when applied to the canonical books of the Old 
and Isew Testaments, a phrase which is never ap- 
" plied to them by any of the Scriptural authors." 
Is that true ? In Jeremiah vii. we read, " The word 
that came to Jeremiah from the Lord." But let 
me give a few instances of it. In Luke iv. 4, our 
Blessed Lord says, Man shall not live by bread 
alone, but by every word of God ;" what word is 
that, luiless the word spoken by him, and written by 
his inspired seiwants ? But again, in Ephesians vi. 
17, what does Paul say? The sword of the Spirit, 
" which is the word of God." And yet this writer, 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



33 



who oiiglit to know liis Bible, says that there is not 
a single instance of that phrase applied by a single 
writer in the Xew Testament to the. Holy Scripture. 
In 1 Peter i. 25, " The word of the Lord endnreth 
for ever." He has spoken, therefore, most rashly 
in having made an assertion so broad. Then 
he proceeds, in the next place, to say, Under the 
" terms of the sixth Article one may accept literally, 
or as parable, or poetry, or legend, the story of a 
serpent tempter ;" that is, the whole story of the 
Fall yon may accept as a legend, as a parable, as a 
piece of poetry; in other words, that the Book of 
Genesis is not a literal, and genuine, and anthentic 
histor}'. Well, if there be not in Genesis the history 
and explanation of the Fall, what explanation has 
Dr. Wilson? We find sin, and death, and sickness, 
and sorrow in the world ; the Mosaic exposition of 
it is the record of a fact ; and that fact mnst stand its 
gronnd till something gi^ander and better supersede 
it. Bnt then it seems to me that if we are figura- 
tively fallen in the first Adam, our redemption in 
the second may be a m^'th also ; if the Fall be a 
legend, the recovery mnst be a legend also ; if the 
introdnction of sin be a mere piece of poetry, then 
the regeneration of the heart must be a mere piece of 
poetry also. 

But not satisfied with all this, he says also, "One 
" may accept as parable, or poetry, or legend, the 

D 



34 



DOCTRIXES DEXIED. 



*' story of an ass speaking with man's voice/' There 
is nothing at all impossible in that fact, if ascribed 
to the power of God. The sacred penman states a 
fact, and we can see it is warranted by the circum- 
stances and the exigencies of the case; and being 
stated as a fact it must be disproved, or it must be 
accepted ; it does not occur in a piece of poetry, but 
in a bare, literal, and naked history. He says also 
there is parable, or poetry, or legend in the story 
" of an arresting of the earth's motion." We all re- 
member the record of that incident, when the sun 
stood still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of 
Ajalon ; but he says it was all parable, or poetry, or 
legend ; and it may be after all but a silly story. But 
it is stated as a literal fact ; it is stated as ha^4ng oc- 
curred for a specific and worthy purpose. If you 
should answer, AYe know that the sun does not move 
round the earth — though Archbishop CuUen, the 
Eoman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, says it does 
— but the earth round the sun ; then how could the 
sun be said to stand still? If you will take the 
almanac that 3'ou carry in your pocket-book, you 
will fijid there that this very day the sun rises some- 
where between four and five in the morning, and sets 
somewhere between seven and eight in the evening. 
But the man that wrote this was an astronomer; 
some of the best almanacs we know are drawTi up 
by most accomplished astronomers ; yet these astro- 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



8S 



nomers do not hesitate to nse tlie language of popular 
conversation : it is of no use using strict technical 
phrases, that would be unintelligible to the mass of 
mankind, in describing phenomena such as these, 
when the phenomena are described not for the infor- 
mation of scientific inquirers, but simply as visible 
facts that occurred, related to and in order to accom- 
plish certain grand pui-poses of God. Another story 
that we find in the Bible may be parable, or poetry, 
or legend, " the waters standing in a solid heap." If 
anybody will be at the trouble when he goes home 
to read the account of the Israelites' march thi^ough 
the Eed Sea, he will find it is distinctly stated that 
they marched through it dry shod. Mark you, if it 
had been a mere breath of wind, as these writers 
hold, that drove the waters of the Eed Sea aside, 
they could not have passed over dry shod ; because 
no w^ind would leave the channel literally and 
strictly dry. But in order that there may be no 
mistake about it, and that no poetry may be con- 
ceived to exist in it, it is said that the sea stood as a 
wall on each side ; then it is said that the Israelites 
passed through diy shod ; and that Pharaoh and all 
his host were drowned in the Eed Sea. It must 
have been a very lucky arrangement, surely Dr. 
"Wilson would say, that the Israelites all got through 
dry shod; it must have been a very unlucky accident 
that Pharaoh and all his chariots were too late, and 



36 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



were buried in tlie Eed Sea. But the language is 
exact history ; it is the history of the incidents of a 
people ; it is the history of their progress ; and it 
must be accepted as the record of literal historic facts. 
The same reasoning applies to the history of the 
passage of the J ordan. He says the universality of 
the Deluge is also a piece of poetry, or a legend, or 
at least may be accepted as such. If Dr. ^Yilson 
means the universality of the Deluge, as contradis- 
tinguished from the fact of the Deluge, I would not 
quarrel with him. There are Christian men who 
think the Flood was not universal : I believe it was 
universal ; the words in the sacred record are so 
explict — " overflowed all the earth," are words con- 
stantly repeated ; the waters went over all the 
earth." Yv^e know that the ark floated some 12,000 
feet above the level of the sea, for it rested on Ararat ; 
well then, we say there is every reason for believing 
that the flood flowed over the whole earth ; and there 
is scientific proof that a certain increase of the tem- 
perature of the ocean by special Divine interposition 
would make the ocean again to overflow the whole 
earth to the same height. But there are Christian 
men, such as the late Dr. Pye Smith, and other?^. 
who believe that the flood was not universal, but 
simply coextensive with the existing population of 
the earth : and there is no difficulty in supposing it 
so, or at least there is no fatal objection to any Chris- 



DOCTIIIXES DENIED. 



37 



lian man holding it. If lie means, therefore, to 
clispute the universality of the Deluge, it may Le 
a question for discussion. But if he means that the 
Deluge itself is a myth, then I ask him for the proof. 
It is stated as a literal fact, it is stated vv'ith a 
minuteness and an explicitness that indicate the pen 
of a faithful historian ; it is quoted by our Blessed 
Lord as a fact ; " As in the days of Xoah men were 
" eating and drinking;" it is quoted,, by the Apostle 
reter as a literal fact — " the ark wherein so many 
" souls were saved." But he says it may be accepted 
as a myth, as poetry, as a legend. I say it cannot be 
accepted as such, unless you are prepared to turn all 
-th.^ -facts of history into myths, and legends, and 
poetry, refusing all as literal and strict history. 

Another myth too is the confusion of tongues. I 
am glad of the opportunity of meeting such objec- 
tions, because it enables one to exj)lain many points 
that we should have missed from not recollecting 
them, by having them here put down as objections. 
He says the confusion of tongues belongs to the same 
category. I answer, the confusion of tongues is also 
recorded as a literal fact. God, it is expressly said, 
divided their tongues into dialects, and they spoke 
different languages, and were unintelligible to each 
other. And it is most remarkable that the researches 
of modem ethnologists have clearly demonstrated 
that ail languages bear the evidences of a common 



38 



DOCTRIXES DENIED. 



ancestral origin ; while all languages haTe certain 
disruptions and dislocations that indicate some shock 
having overtaken them in the course of their trans- 
mission. That original language is beyond all 
dispute the Hebrew, to which you trace the Greek, 
and to the Greek you trace much of the Latin ; and 
then Tou trace to the Latin the French, and the 
Italian, and the Spanish; and when you come to 
deal with the Eastern languages the Sanskrit, the 
Hindostanee, the Arabic, the Sj'riac, you find they 
are pervaded and interpenetrated with Hebre^^' 
words, and words obviously of Hebrew origin. I do 
not w^ant a more splendid proof of the common origin 
of our race from one parent, or of the existence of 
the tower of Babel, or of the literal fact of the Flood, 
or of the confusion of tongues, than a thorough ac- 
quaintance with the Hebrew, the Greek, and the 
Latin ; and you will find in these the irresistible 
proofs that Dr. Wilson dreams, and that God's word 
is truth. ^ io •'(^iiidkaov Anods 

He adds another instance : he says, we may also 
accept as poetry or legend the story of the corporeal 
taking up of Elijah into heaven. Here again he 
finds another myth ; why, this man makes myths of 
everthing. I should not be surprised if he were to 
land in the conclusion of the late Bishop Berkeley, 
a very odd and clever, but more imwise than wise 
Churchman, who denied the existence of matter, and 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



35b 



said there was no sueli thing as iron, stone, houses, 
bricks, timber ; but simply ideas in the mind of the 
person ; everything was ideal, nothing was real. 

With this reverend writer everything is poetry 
and legend ; and we have no plain prose that we 
can read, no intelligible fact that we can learn. But 
the taking up of Elijah is recorded as a strict and 
literal fact : and what thoroughly authenticates the 
fact, if authentication were requisite, is the cii^cum- 
stance that when Jesus was transfigured on the 
mount, Elijah comes from heaven in the body, Closes 
fi'om his resting-place that no man knew ; and both 
are present with Christ : Moses, the representative 
of law ; Elijah, the representative of the prophets, to 
attest his glory, and to talk with him of the death he 
should accomplish at Jerusalem. Why should he 
niake this a piece of poetry, a myth ? There is no 
reason for it. Is such a thing impossible vrith God ? 
Grant a literal resurrection of the dead body ; why 
should you deny the possibility of a literal trans- 
formation of the living body ? The Scripture says 
when Christ comes, the dead in Christ shall rise 
first, then we which are alive shall all be changed ; 
we shall not die, we shall all be changed. We have 
in the case of Enoch, and in the case of Elijah, an 
instance of what shall take place on those of us that 
live when Christ comes ; and you have in Moses 
luised from the o'rave an instance and an illustration 



40 



DOCTEIXES DENIED. 



of what sliall take place upon the sainted dead, when 
the trumpet sounds, and when Christ comes ; and in- 
stead of these being myths, or legends, or romances, 
they are facts of precious character, lying at the very 
foundation of our Christian hope, and shedding light 
and life on many of those best and blessed hopes 
which the gospel of Christ teaches us to entertain. 

And then he ends with what seems to me must bo 
in him a very necessary conclusion : that among 
the other parables, and legends, and myths, may be 
the personality of Satan ; for surely nothing but 
either a deceived heart or Satanic influence could 
have led a Christian man to make the monstrous 
assertions which are contained in this Essay. But 
mark what necessarily follows : if Satan be a figure of 
speech, the Holy Ghost must be a figure of speech 
also ; for the very same language that describes the 
personality of the one, describes the personality of 
the other. But why should all angels be figures 
and legends ? V{h.Y may there not be hierarchies 
of creatures ascending near to the very throne of 
Deity, each rising above the other in sjDlendour, in 
magnificence, in power ? He is driven to this con- 
clusion, because he has swept away all history before 
he reaches it ; and retaining one personality in his 
creed, would be inconsistent with the destructive 
process to which he has subjected all previous his- 
toric facts contained in God's holy word. 



DOCTRIXES DENIED, 



41^ 



I turn to anotlier passage in this Essay, equally 
objectionable and equally unscriptural. He says, 
" Thus some may consider," and this is almost what 
you would have expected from what he has come to 
before; " Thus some may consider the descent of 

all mankind from Adam and Eve as an undoubted 
" historical fact ; others may rather perceive in that 
" relation a form of narrative, into which in early 
" ages tradition would easily throw itself spon- 
" taneously." And then he adds, " And many 

narratives of marvels and catastrophes in the Old 

Testament are referred to in the Xew as emblems, 
" without either denying or asserting their literal 
" truth ; such as the destruction of Sodom and Go- 
" morrah." If he will go to the Dead Sea, he will 
find the traces of it. An American traveller main- 
tains — I do not know if he is correct — that he found 
a pillar standing in the sea, fixed, and of great 
height ; and he believes that pillar to be the literal 
monument into which Lot's wife vras turned on that 
occasion. Whether that traveller be right or wrong 
I do not pronounce ; but it is fact that the Dead Sea 
bears the traces of its origin : the valley in the south of 
Palestine where that sea is found, into which the 
Jordan continually pours its turbid stream, was once 
the most fertile, the most beautiful, the richest, in 
all the land of Palestine. The water of the Dead 
Sea has a specific gravity even greater than that of 



42 



BOCTEINES DENIED. 



otlier seas ; and in tlie next place, it is perTaded by 
snlpliiirous elements, tliat indicate, if it be not the 
evidence of the historic fact recorded in Scripture, 
traces of being the basin of some great volcano ; and 
the whole surrounding margin of the sea has about 
it a desert aspect, as if the judgment of heaven still 
lingered on its bosom; and Xature rose in her 
majesty, and contradicted the assertions of those 
who maintain that the most solemn and awful facts 
are simply myths, and legends, and poetry, and 
romance. 

Then he denies also that the angelic appearances 
that came to earth, and ushered in the Incarna- 
tion, were real. " The incarnification of the divine 
" Immanuel remains, although the angelic appear- 

ances which herald it, in the narratives of the 
" Evangelists, may be of ideal origin, according to 
" the conceptions of former days." He winds up 
the whole with a piece of very beautiful writing, 
I admit, but very hollow, and I think very untrue ; 
it is this : he says, The Christian Church can only 
" tend on those who are committed to its care, to 
" the verge of that abyss which parts this world 
" from the world unseen. Some few of those fostered 
" by her, are now ripe for entering on a higher 
" career; the many are but rudimentary spirits — 
" germinal souls." He means that all are good 
seed ; but some are still seed ; others are germinal- 



DOCXrJNES DENIED. 



43 



ing, others are budding, and others are growing up. 
"What fihall become of them?" Yes, that is the 
question of questions. If vre look abroad in the 
*' world, and regard the neutral character of the 
"multitude" — the neutral character of the multitude! 
What is the picture of the multitude by St. Paul, 
in the Epistle to the Eomans, the first chapter ? 
What is the picture of the multitude, whereTor it 
is faithfully photographed, and presented to man- 
kind? " If we look abroad in the world," he says, 
" and regard the neutral character of the multitude, 
" we are at a loss to apply to them, either the pro- 
" mises" — now I am not surprised that he is at a 
loss to apply them — " or the denunciations of revela- 
" tion. So, the wise heathens could anticipate a 
" reunion with the great and good of all ages ; they 
" could represent to themselves, at least in a figura- 
" tire manner, the punishment and the purgatoiy of 
" the wicked ; but they would not expect the reap- 
" pearance in another world, for any pui^ose, of a 
" Thersites or an Hyperboles — social and poetical 
" justice had been sufficiently done upon them. Yet 
" there are such as these, and no better than these, 
" under the Christian name — babblers, busybodies, 
" livers to get gain, and mere eaters and drinkers. 
The Pioman Chui^h has imagined a infantium.''' 
I will explain that to you : the Church of Eome 
believes that infants dying un baptized do not go to 



44 BOCTEES'ES DENIED. 

lieaven, and tliey do not go to liell; hut tlie Tope,' 
puzzled where to find a place fur them, has invented 
what he calls a limliis infant ium—^ limbo, or a sort 
of purgatory or place for infants. Most Christians 
believe, on thoroughly good ground, that all infants 
ihat die before years of responsibility are, without 
exception, saved : it is to me one of the bright lights 
in the Christian economy rising on the sad fact 
that half the human race die in infancy, and before 
they reach years of maturity, and shining upon the 
dark masses of fallen humanity with no perishable 
lustre, that all infants dying in infancy, whether 
baptized or unbaptized, enter into joy. I believe^ 
that if sin abounding has involved irresponsible 
inftmts in Adam's ruin, grace, much more abound- 
ing, will involve irresponsible infants, because in- 
capable of personally believing, in Christ's purchase, 
Christ's sacrifice, and Christ's righteousness. But 
the Eoman Catholic Church invents what she calls 
a linibus infantium. Well, he says, " Vv'e must rather 
" entertain a hope that there shall be found, after 
" the great adjudication, receptacles suitable for 
" those who shall be infants, not as to years of ter- 
" restrial life, but as to spiritual development — 
" nurseries as it were and seed-grounds, where the 
" undeveloped may grow up under new conditions 
— the stunted may become strong, and the per- 
'* verted be restored. And when the Christian 



DOCTRINES DENIED. 



45 



clmrcli, in all its branches, shall have fulfilled 
j' its siiblimary office, and its Founder shall have 
J* surrendered his kingxlom to the great Father, all, 
" both small and great, shall find a shelter in the 

bosom of the Universal Parent, to repose or be 
" quickened into higher life, in the ages to come, 
*' according to his will." 

In other words, he believes in universal salvation. 
I would believe it too if the Bible were not explicit, 
unmistakeable as an oracle in speaking of it. At 
the last day the tares shall be separated from the 
^heat ; in the last day the good fishes shall be 
separated from the bad ; on the right hand shall be 
the sheep, on the left shall be the goats ; to the one 
shall be given the glorious and thrilling invitation, 

Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom ;" on the 
other shall be denounced the awful and crushing 
sentence, " Depart, ye cursed." But mark what lies 
at the bottom of this theory of his ; it is his phrase — 
4' the undeveloped." In other words, this wi'iter 
practically holds that a sinner is simply an unde- 
veloped saint ; and that if you nurse that sinner 
long enough, or let him alone, he will by-and-by 
develop himself into a -saint. Then, of course, 
drunkenness is simply undeveloped sobriety ; and 
theft is undeveloped honesty; leave a thief long 
enough to himself, and he will develop into an 
honest man ; leave a murderer long enough to him- 



46 



DOCTRIXES DEFIED. 



self, and lie will develop into a merciful man ; and 
leave (the logic is clear) hell long enough, it wdll 
develop into heaven ; and the logic still does not 
h.ilt — if yon leave the devil long enongh, he "v^^ll be 
developed into a glorious archangel and worshipper 
in the courts of heaven. 

Such reasoning — if reasoning it can be called— 
contains its own refutation. 



47 



III. 

THE MOSAIC C0S3I0G0XY. 

\Te liaTe encleaToiired to show, wliat indeed it is 
scarcely necessary to repeat, that in tlie Scriptures, as 
a revelation of tlie Infinite God, and of Deity tliat has 
infinite relations, there are some things hard to he 
understood ; hnt we tried to show yon that there is 
nothing essential to onr salvation in the Scriptures 
impossible to be understood: impossible to be com- 
prehended it may be, because the finite never can 
comprehend the infinite ; but we can accept things 
we cannot comprehend ; and we can believe truths 
revealed which are not explained, simply on the 
authority of him who reveals them. Vv'e have 
also adduced the strange and startling assertions 
made by learned and, it is presumed, sincere men, 
who have wiitten a work that has made a great, 
though not a very enviable sensation in the world, 
less by the learning it contains, and more by the 
daring onslaught it makes upon truths that were 
supposed to be axioms, and upon doctrines that are 
clearly, and fully, and repeatedly asserted in God's 
holy word. AVe brought forward the objections of 



48 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



these able men not in a spirit of inYective or nn- 
cliaritableness ; God forbid ; for if tliej be sincere Tre 
ought to respect them, however mnch we feel it onr 
duty to protest against the conclusions they have 
arrived. The Bishops of the Churc^h of England 
have condemned, but they have not yet refuted the 
book. It becomes a duty to show that it is worthy 
of being condemned by disproving the statements 
which it contains. The assertions of Dr. ^Yilliams, 
the Professor of Hebrew in St. David's College, 
Lampeter, and the instructor of the future ministers 
of the Church of England, are utterly unreliable. 
AYe gave not bold assertions, but irrefragable disproofs 
of the accuracy of his statements and of the consist- 
ency of his logic. There are two other prominent 
Essays not touched upon, one on the cosmogony of the 
world, by Goodwin ; the other on the interpretation 
of Scripture, by Professor Jowett ; both men of mind 
and learning, but not incapable of being refuted ; 
and in order to refute them it is not requisite you 
should have great genius, but sobriety of judgment, 
ordinary research ; and the desire which they may 
have had, however mistaken they may be, to find 
out what is the actual truth of the matter. 

The lecture on what is called the cosmogony of 
the world is by Mr. Goodwin. Cosmogony means 
the creation of the world — the arrangement of the 
present cosmos or universe in which we are. How- 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



49 



ever learned Mr. Goodwin may be, however sincere, 
and desirous of establishing what is truth, he has 
made rash and unscientific statements ; and it becomes 
the duty of every one that knows the more excellent 
way to meet his statements inch by inch, and state- 
ment by statement ; and to prove what can be proved, 
that he is mistaken, or that he has not reasoned 
correctly, or at least that the facts of science and the 
allegations of the writer are not in perfect harmony. 
This collection of Essays would not be worth the 
time expended upon it were it not that it has at- 
tained enoimous notoriety, and that numbers of 
young men., with that warmth by which the young 
are characterized, charmed and arrested by the bril- 
liancy of the writing, have not detected the viper that 
is underneath the brilliant flowers, or, to use plainer 
language, the false reasoning that underlies the gaudy 
and the decorated rhetoric. Every statement that 
Mr. Goodwin makes is desigTied, it must be delibe- 
rately designed, for there is no denying that, to shake 
your confidence in the trustworthiness of the Mosaic 
record ; and to prove that Moses was ignorant, cer- 
tainly a fallible man ; that he stated a great deal that 
is scientifically wrcng, and that Moses needs the 
nineteenth century and Mr. Goodwin to correct his 
geology, and make him a wiser and better-informed 
writer of the Old Testament. Accordingly, he begins 
his Essay upon the Mosaic Cosmogony by saying, — ^ 

E 



50 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



The Churcli naturally took a lively interest in tlie 
disputes wMch arose between the philosophers of 
" the new school and those who adhered to the old 
" doctrines, inasmuch as the Hebrew records," he 
means by that very secular phrase the inspired 
Scriptures ; ' ' inasmuch as the Hebrew records, the 
basis of religious faith, manifestly countenanced 
the opinion of the earth's immobility, and certain 
" other views of the universe very incompatible with 
" those propounded by Copernicus." We at once 
reply, the Mosaic account was not wiitten to teach 
astronomy, nor are we to refer to it for proofs of scien- 
tific facts or scientific phenomena. What we should 
expect in a revelation addressed, not to philosophers, 
but to the common sense and the average level of 
mankind, would be not a philosophical account of 
the creation of the earth, but that account of it 
which relates to us as fallen, as moral, as responsible 
beings, needing to be told in popular language the 
story of our ruin, and needing to be taught no less 
the more marvellous story of our restoration, and only 
so far scientific as this requires. I maintain that there 
is not one passage, from the commencement of Genesis 
to its close, that teaches what he here calls the immo- 
bility of the earth. He says, for instance, In re- 
gard to such a text as, ^ The world is established, 
" * it cannot be moved,' though it might imply the 
*^ sacred penman's ignorance of the fact that the 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGOXY. 



5t 



" ^artli does move." AYe maintain that the earth 
cannot be moved : but this philosopher, not I think 
very courteous, asserts that the immobility of the 
earth, so far as asserted in this passage, means that it 
does not march in its orbit ; but what the sacred 
penman asserts is, not that the earth does not move 
in its orbit, but that it cannot be moved from that 
orbit ; that is all. I maintain, in the language of the 
sacred penman, the earth cannot be moved ; that is 
to say, it cannot be taken out of its orbit ; it cannot 
be made to go off at a tangent, or by an eccentric 
impulse, and impinge upon other orbs ; it cannot be 
moved. The ancient philosopher said, if he had only 
a fulcrum, a proper fulcrum, outside the earth, he 
could move it ; but his very admission, his very wish 
to have such a fulcrum and such a lever, is evidence 
that the earth cannot be moved ; that is, cannot be 
moved out of that orbit in which it moves, and 
performs its regular beat, like a sentinel on his 
round, in 365i days. But what is very striking, 
whilst the Bible says this, and says it in language 
scientifically correct, and not to be interpreted as 
this learned philosopher interprets it, some of the 
most accomplished philosophers and astronomers 
maintained that the heliocentric idea of the universe, 
the days of the earth, and the planets going round 
the sun, is indicated in the word of God. Let me 
give you one very striking extract from the cele- 



52 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



brated Meyer, a Gennan astronomer and an eminent 
Christian ; he qnotesthis text, " Every good gift and 
every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down 
'* from the Father of lights, with whom is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning." He 
remarks upon this, " Here allusion is made to the 
*' earth, in contrast to the lights of the firmament, 
and there is attributed to the former, not as anacci- 
dental, but as an inherent quality, what is denied 
as an essential or inherent property with God, 
namely, a variableness and darkness produced by 
" turning (or rotation). Were reference here made 
to a revolution of the heavens about the earth, in 
" connection with which the sun produces the alter- 
" nation of day and night, this ^motion would be 
something external to, and not belonging to the 
earth, which would not be in harmony with the 
import of the contrast. We concede that the hint 
is a very slight one, not rising to the character of 
a direct animadversion; and we regard the pas- 
" sage as a proof, as delicate as it is clear, that no 
" less according to the wisdom of the Spirit of God, 
*' than the teachings of modern science, the earth 
" rotates upon its axis ; yea, that it holds, as is 
" scarcely to be separated from its axial rotation, its 
annual course around the sun, and hence, of course, 
that the heliocentric system must underlie the 
views of the Bible." And another writer, Goltz, 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



53 



refeiTed to by the same aiitlior, says, ' Then from 

'evening and morning arose tlie first day' (as 
" Luther renders the passage). By this he would 
" have us understand, ' Then came the day from 
" ' evening (the west) towards morning (the east).' 
" And thus does the passage contain evidence that 
" the earth rotates from the west to the east ; for, 
" were the Scriptures to speak geocentrically, they 
" should say, in accordance with the apparent course 
" of the sun, ' Then from the morning and the even- 

' ing arose the first day.' " Now these, I admit, 
are delicate intimations; but I maintain that the 
logic that draws from these two delicate hints the 
rotatory revolution of the earth on its axis, and its 
movement round the sun in its orbit, is far more 
real and reliable than the strange logic that draws 
from the words, " The world is established, that 

it cannot be moved," the extravagant inference 
that the sacred writer meant that the earth does 
not revolve round the sun, and that the sacred 
penman is deceived and mistaken. So much for 
this passage. Now I turn to another place. He 
-says of the first chapter of Genesis, ''It can 
" scarcely be said that this chapter is not intended in 
*' paii: to teach and convey at least some physical 

truth." My answer to that is, it was not intended 
to convey astronomical or geological facts ; but to in- 
dicate simply as much of natural geological and astro- 



54 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



nomical Mstoiy as was necessary for the knowledge 
and enliglitenment of mankind. Well, tlien lie says, 
And taking its words in their plain sense, it mani- 
festly gives a view of the universe adverse to that 
of modern science. It represents the sky as a 
*' watery vault, in which the sun, moon, and stars 
are set." Now this man has not fairly and fully 
read when he ventured to make that assertion. 
I maintain that Genesis does not represent the 
sky as a solid or a watery vault; and that this 
writer must have read the Bible in the Septuagint 
translation, or in the Latin vulgate, or in the common 
English Version. It is there certainly that the 
word firmament occurs ; in our English Bible, in the 
first of Genesis, the sky is called the firmament. 
Well, that word means something firmamental, some- 
thing solid. So the Latin translation, the Vulgate, 
made in the fourth century, translates it firmament im.^ 
that same Latin word meaning something solid. So 
the Greek Septuagint, which was a translation of the 
Hebrew into Greek two hundred and sixty years be- 
fore the Christian era, translates the Hebrew word 
into crepe wjua, related to our word stereoscope : which 
means something made to appear, as a stereoscopic 
picture does appear, something solid. But when you 
fall back to the Hebrew, you discover how utterly 
mistaken Mr. Goodwin is, for the Hebrew for 
firmament is T\>y^ ; I may put it in English letters, 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



55 



ha raquiah. Well, that word in Hebrew means 
" infinite space ; expanse without solidity and with- 
" out limits." So that this scientific writer has 
made his criticism upon the English of the Bible, 
instead of referring to the original Hebrew word, as 
he ought to have done ; and then he would have dis- 
covered that his idea of the sky being a solid vault, 
in which sun, and moon, and stars, are set like gas 
lamps, is altogether a misapprehension, and unworthy 
of a scholar, who had the means of access to the 
original, to maintain. He proceeds after this to make 
other criticisms upon the same chapter, still trying 
to show that the Mosaic account is altogether un- 
reliable. For instance : ** In the second verse, the 
earliest state of things is described according to the 
" received translation, ' The earth was without form 
^ and void.' The prophet Jeremiah uses the same 
expression to describe the desolation of the earth's 
" surface, occasioned by God's wrath." Now I can- 
not see that that tells against the Mosaic account in 
the least. We say that before Adam and Eve were 
created, or rather before the magnificent words were 
uttered, And God said, Let there be light, and 
there was " light ;" we say, before that the earth 
was chaos, wreck. He seems to think that is 
evidence that there is something wrong ; but in- 
stead of being so, the last discoveries of modem 
geology prove to us that this earth had been in- 



56 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGOXY. 



liabited by living beings, or creatures, or animals, 
thousands of years before Adam was created ; and 
in reference to the last arrangement, as I shall 
show — the Mosaic account is not the history of 
the whole earth since it was made out of nothing ; 
but it is the history of its last furniture and ar- 
rangement for the dynasty of man, who was 
introduced on it, in order to subdue it, cultivate 
it, and possess it. And therefore in these words 
there is nothing absurd nor wi'ong. He repeats again 
in another passage the statement about the Hebrews 
understanding the sky and the firmament to be 
something solid or something that was firm, firma- 
ment, and a vault; and then he says, *'0n the 
fourth day the two great lights, the sun and moon, 
are made, and set in the firmament of heaven, to 
give light to the earth ; but more particularly to 
serve as the means of measuring time, and of 
marking out years, days, and seasons; this is the 
** most prominent office assigned to them (v. 14, 18). 
" The formation of the stars is mentioned in the 
" most cursory manner." I answer, it is not as- 
serted in the sacred passage that the sun, and the 
moon, and the stars, were appointed specialty, as 
the most prominent office, to give light to this earth ; 
but that they, being then in existence, and for 
millions of years before in existence, were then con- 
stituted to sustain not their onl^/ relation, but a rela- 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



57 



tion to this orb by giving it light. Now if it required 
profound acquaintance with Hebrew, one would not 
be surprised; but really it only requires such a 
knowledge of Hebrew as a very ordinary scholar 
may attain to, to understand what he seems to have 
misunderstood, that the word applied to the sim and 
moon is not the same word which is applied to light. 
For instance, when it says, " And God said, Let 
" there be light, and there was light," the He- 
brew is ''O) (yehi owr), Let there be light; 
''and there was" ^^^^ ''light" But when it is 
said, " He made two great lights, the sun and 
" the moon," it is nh^^n (ha mao wroth), a totally 
distinct and independent word. Then you say, 
if it be a different word, what is the meaning of 
this latter word? Open any Hebrew lexicon you 
like, and you will find that, in the plural num- 
ber, it means not lights^ but light-bearers, link-carriers, 
sconces or candlesticks, if you like; something to 
carry a light. Now what is the most recent dis- 
covery of modern science ? That the sun is positively 
an opaque body, the same as this earth ; and that the 
light that comes from him is something subsequently 
added to the body of the sun, a luminous atmo- 
sphere; and that this opaque body, by a special 
fiat of God, is made to be a light-carrying and 
reflecting body. Hence all that is asserted is, that 
on the fourth day God made the sun, which had 



58 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGO^^Y. 



existed millions of years before, to sustain a de- 
finite relationship to the eartli, of radiating or 
reflecting light upon the earth ; and therefore his 
criticism is incorrect. And how sad it is that men 
occupying chairs in the Universities ; representing, 
as they profess to do, the exegetical and critical 
learning of the Chnrch of England, which I believe 
they do not, should on such flimsy premises make 
such sweeping charges against the sacred penman in 
the word of God ! But he is not satisfied with this ; 
he proceeds farther, combating Dr. Bnckland, the 
celebrated geologist's view of it. He says, AYhat 
" were the -new relationships which the heavenly 
" bodies, according to Dr. Buckland's view, assumed 
" to the newly modified earth and to the human race ? 

They had, as we well know, marked out seasons, 
"days, and years; and had given light for ages 
" before to the earth, and to the animals which pre- 
" ceded man as its inhabitants ; as is shown, Dr. 
" Buckland admits, by the eyes of fossil animals, 
" optical instruments of the same construction as 
" those of the animals of our days ; and also by the 
" existence of vegetables in the early world, to the 
" development of which light must have been essential 
" then as now.'' Kow what are the facts of the case ? 
I wish you specially to look at this, because it is one 
of his most striking and ]nost plausible, but I main- 
tain most untenable positions. He says, what at 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



59 



once we admit, that there were animals on the earth 
thousands of years hefore man was created. There 
is nothing in the Bible against that ; and geology 
most thoroughly proves it. You have only to pay a 
visit to the fossil department of the British Museum — 
a most interesting and remarkable collection of geo- 
logical petrifactions — and you will there see specimens 
of such animals : we see in some the places where 
there were eyes, and the eyes fossilized ; now these 
animals can be proved to have existed probably a 
hundred thousand years ago ; of that I have no 
doubt. These animals had eyes, Mr. Goodwin very 
justly remarks ; but what must have been the use 
of eyes ? Of course to see ; there must therefore have 
been light. Well then he says, therefore the state- 
ment that light was lodged in the sun, and that the 
sun was appointed to give light only 6000 years ago, 
is a false statement ; for that there must have been 
light hundreds of thousands of years before the fourth 
day of creation, when the fiat went out that the sun 
and the moon were to be for lights and for seasons to 
mankind. Well now, all this assumes that we are 
totally dependent upon the sun for light ; and that 
without the sun we should have no light. That of 
course is our present experience ; but wliether scienti- 
fically and chymically that be truth, I appeal to every 
scientific and to every chymical scholar. And that 
you may have the opinion not of one individual, but 



60 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



of one who knew well, I will refer you to the follow- 
ing remarkable passages. You have all heard of one 
of the most marvellous and massive monuments of 
learning, the ''Cosmos" of the celebrated Hum- 
boldt, who died only the other year. In that book, 
at page 207, where he speaks of the northern light, 
he says, " This phenomenon derives most of its 

importance from the fact, that the earth becomes self" 
" luminous, and that in the capacity of a planet, 
" besides the light which it receives from the central 
" body, the sun, it shows itself capable, in itself, of 
" developing light. The intensity of the terrestrial light 

exceeds somewhat, in cases of the brightest-coloured 
" radiation toward the zenith, the light of the moon 
"in its first quarter. Occasionally printed cha- 
" racters have been read by this light, without diffi- 
" culty. This almost uninterrupted terrestrial develop- 
" ment of light in the polar regions of the earth, 

leads us to the interesting phenomenon presented 
" by Venus. The portion of this planet which is 
*' not illumined by the sun, often shines with a phos- 

phorescent light of its own. It is not improbable 

that the moon, Jupiter, and the comets, shine with 
*' a light of their own, in addition to reflected solar 
" light, noticeable as such through the polariscope. 
" Without speaking of the problematical but very 
" common species of cloud lightning, in which a 
*' heavy, lowering cloud may be seen to shine with 



THE :\rOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



61 



" an iiiiinteriTipted flickering liglit, for many minutes 
" together, we still meet with other instances of 
" terrestrial development of light in our atmosphere." 
Wagner — another very eminent authority — adds : 
*' The northern light being an intermitting j^he- 
nomenon, and exhibiting to us a change from 
light to darkness independent of the sun, we may 
" find in it an analogy to a similar change occurring 
upon the earth before the creation of the sun." 
xlnother writer, Schubert, a \q>tj learned and able 
German, says, " May not that polar light, which 
" is called an aurora of the north, be the last glim- 
mering light of a departed age of the world, in 
which the whole earth was enclosed in an expanse 
" of aerial fluid, from which, through the agency of 
" the electro-magnetic forces, streamed forth an 
" incomparably greater degree of light, accomjDanied 
at the same time with animating warmth, almost 
in a similar mode to what still occurs in the 
luminous atmosphere of our sun ?" So that from 
these facts we have the irrefragable proof that 
light existed prior to the appointment of the 
sun to give light ; and one of them, with an 
acuteness that is most just as it is most precious, 
says. May not that polar light, that noiihem light 
which 3'ou will see in northern regions, in the 
northern parts of this island even, be the remains of 
that beautiful light which encompassed our globe 



62 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGOXY. 



before sun, or iQoon, or stars slione U}X)ii it ? and 
may not the Mosaic account, therefore, instead of 
being iinpliilosopliical, be the true scientific account, 
that the light, which lav like an aurora on the earth, 
which embosomed it, and enabled all creatures that 
had been in it preTiously to see by it, God, instead 
of suftering to remain any longer as an aurora all 
encompassing it, for his own purpose and out of his 
own wisdom fixed it in the sun, and made the sun 
what the Hebrew word means, not in its orb the 
soui'ce of light, but simply a light-ean'ier, a light- 
bearer, a light-holder, to this earth on which we now 
dwell ? 

Well now, I have shown you from these proofs, to 
my mind most conclusive, that it is not Moses that 
has made the mistake, but Mr. CTOodwin that has 
been dreaming ; and if he will only bring his dreams 
not to the Mosaic record, but to the last inductions 
of a riper philosophy, he vnll learn that I am neither 
misinterpreting nor misjudging ; and perhaps he 
may live to correct the scientific blunders he has 
committed, as well as to retract the very sad charges 
he has made, where no charges ought to be made, 
against the sublime and magnificent record of the 
creation of the heavens and of the earth. I know 
that some, perhaps, who have not turned their 
attention to the study of geology and science — 
intensely interesting — may have been startled 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



63 



frlien tliev heard me say, in replying to these 
sophisms, that I believe the earth to be hundreds 
of thousands of years of age. Let us never re- 
fuse a discovery in science because vre think it 
jars with a text in the Bible. I have made up my 
mind, and I think every Christian has done so, 
that the Bible on its own evidence is God's book ; 
and I have no more fear that any subsequent dis- 
covery of science will shake the foundations of the 
Bible as the word of God than I have that any gas 
lamps upon the streets of London will put out the 
light of the sun ; I have no fear of that whatever. 
Well then, I lay the Bible aside in the chamber, or in 
the cells, or if you like in the cabinet of my memory, 
as a clearly demonstrated revelation from God; 
having done so I can come and listen to the disclo- 
sures of science ; I will not refuse the reasoning of the 
scientific investigator because I think it jars with the 
Bible ; if his discoveries do jar, my inference vrill be 
this, not that the Bible is wrong, but that possibly 
his discovery may not be right ; and as it is matter 
of history that the discoveries of yesterday in 
geology have been superseded by the discoveries of 
to-day ; and as it is veiy possible that the imperfect 
discovery of to-day may be superseded by the riper 
discovery of to-morrow ; my inference will be not 
that the Bible is wrong, as these men have rashly 
concluded, but that science is not yet ripe ; I will 



64 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONT. 



wait, satisfied that there is no contradiction ; and 
I shall see, by patient waiting, harmony where 
there seems now to be discord. It has been 
proved beyond all dispute that the earth is of 
Tast age. We can show, what now indeed is 
familiar to you all, that five successive dynasties 
at least — I use a technical phrase — races, if you 
like to call them, of living creatures, existed in the 
earth before the period when God said, *' Let there 
" be light, and there was light." We can show that 
first, over the primary rocks and the primary founda- 
tions of the earth, where the heat must have been 
so great that no living creature could exist, the 
instant the temperature of the earth became such 
that life could exist, life was introduced. We find a 
race created ; we find that race die ; we then find 
vast masses of deposit over and around its fossil 
remains like sand deposited, softly deposited in 
some parts thousands of feet thick, by heat and 
pressure, and the lapse of ages, turned into solid 
rock. Above this rock, which had fallen in the shape 
of sand so softly that it does not even disturb the 
exquisite organization of the fossil creatures it con- 
tains, it has become so hard that jou require to break 
it with a hammer in order to reveal the petrifactions 
it contains ; above, and unconnected with this, and in 
another formation, you have all at once another 
dynasty of once living creatures introduced in their 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 65 

perfection by a direct creative act of God ; so much 
so that if I had not in the Bible a single text that 
God is, and made all things, I conld demonstrate 
from geology, just as plainly as I can demonstrate 
any fact in history, that God has many times 
stepped into our world, and created races; and in 
successive times those races have died and passed 
away. Such formations must have required im- 
mense ages. The creatures you discover in these 
stratified rocks are most of them totally different 
from any that we have now. Go to the British 
Museum — you will be much more edified there 
for nothing than by paying a large sum to the 
theatre — study the collection of fossils; and there 
you vrill see pre-Adamite races of living creatures 
totally difi'erent in their physiological structures from 
any creatures that we have now in the existing 
dynasties on the earth. It is therefore irresistibly 
proved that this earth is thousands of years of 
age. We have proof also of the great age of the 
stars. This writer objects that on the fourth day 
God is said to have made the two great light- 
bearers ; and then it is added, " and he made 
" the stars also." Well, the popular impression 
is, that God created the stars on the fourth day. 
W^e know that the light of a star requires time 
to travel. I need not tell you that if you look up 
to the sun you do not see the sun as he is at the 

F 



66 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



moment you look up to him, but as lie was eight 
minutes ago : it takes eight minutes for a ray of 
light, as the missionary representative of the sun, to 
travel from that sun to your eye, and therefore it 
proves the sun existed eight minutes ago. Kow, 
there are stars whose light has been travelling 6,000, 
12,000, and even for 100,000 years; and Herschel 
has discovered stars so distant that their light has 
just reached our world; that light has been tra- 
velling probably many years before our orb was 
made. But, what does that prove ? Why, if the 
sun is only seen as he was eight minutes ago, the 
sun must have existed eight minutes ago; if a star 
of the twelfth magnitude is only seen as it. was 
4,000 3"ears ago, it must have existed 4,000 
years ago; and if a star whose ray has taken 
100,000 years to travel to our orb is now seen, that 
star must have existed 100,000 years ago. And 
therefore we can demonstrate, with an accuracy 
positively undeniable, that the stars were in existence 
it may be millions of years ago. If this be the case, 
you ask, how do you explain the first chapter of 
Genesis ? I answer, the Bible itself admits the fact 
that the stars existed before the creation ; there is 
one very conclusive passage to this effect in Job 
xxxviii. 6, where he says, " Whereupon are the foun- 
" dations of the earth fastened ? or who laid the corner 
"stone thereof? when the morning stars sang together, 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGOXY. 



67 



" and all the sons of God shouted for joy." What is the 
import of this exquisite poetic picture ? That the stars 
are figuratively described as looking on when the 
earth was arranged by God ; and that this earth, 
however old, is subsequent in its creation to the 
stars. But you say, how do you harmonize this with 
the popular notion which this author takes up and 
animadverts upon with great severity ? He says, 

The school books of the present day, while they 

teach the child that the earth moves, yet assure 
" him that it is a little less than 6,000 years old." 
Well, it may be the teaching of our school books, 
but our school books are not our laws or rule of 
faith ; what we maintain is, that the first few verses 
of Genesis — and in this I agree with Dr. Buckland 
and Dr. Chalmers, and I disagree with Hugh Miller, 
eminent as he was — contain the description of the 
primal creation of our world. 

^' In the beginning God created the heavens and 
" the earth." What does " in the beginning " mean ? 
It is applied to Christ; " In the beginning was the 
" Yv'ord, and the Word was God:'^ it means in the 
depths of eternity, xlfter the earth was created, it 
maybe millions of years ago, it underwent a change ; 
and the sacred penman proceeds to add, And the 

earth was all emptiness, wreck, and desolation;" 
exactly what geology shows ; a dynasty after dj'nasty 
created, and dynasty after dynasty extinguished ; 



68 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



the eartli having undergone in pre-Adamite ages 
immense mTitations and convnlsions. 
* And God said, Let there be light; and there 
** was light;" and then he says, And the evening 
" and the morning were the first day." You have 
first the assertion of the original creation of the 
earth ; and I am not sure but that the Hebrew word 
hara implies, to create out of nothing ; the Hebrew 
word aasah means, to make out of something already 
existing. Well, the first assertion is, the earth simply 
was made ; that is all ; then the second historical 
statement is, that it was reduced by some great con- 
vulsion into chaos ; the third historic statement is, 
God interposed, and said, Let there be light ; and 
there was light ; and then the fouith is, the six days 
oh each of which he creates distinct gemra and species 
in the existing vegetable and animal world. And we 
have thus, therefore, in the Mosaic record just as 
much geology as was necessaiy to be a basis for the 
developing the great moral history of the fall and 
the ruin of mankind. 

This writer remarks, "Man is said to have been 
*' created male and female ; and the narrative contains 
" nothing to show that a single pair only is intended." 
Is ow here is a mere surmise which no reader pos- 
sessed of common sense can accept. ^Yonld any 
fair mind ever dream, on reading the early chapters 
of the Book of Genesis, that there was more than 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 



69 



"a single human pair?" You find Adam, and you 
find Eve next created. Our author adds, The 
omission to create a female at the same time is 
" stated to have been repaired by the subsequent 
" foimation of one from the side of the man the 
idea he conveys being that the creation of woman 
was accidentally omitted ; and that an after-thought 
of Deity led to the creation of her to whom man 
owes his greatest happiness, and who is alike the 
charm, the ornament, and the cohesion of all social 
life. His gallantry is only equal to his philosophy ; 
and both are eclipsed by his scepticism. 

He proceeds in another passage to say, **TVhen 
" we compare the verses Genesis i. 29, 30, with 
Genesis ix. 3, in which after the flood animals are 
" given to man for food in addition to the green 
" herb, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion 
that in the earliest view taken of creation, men and 
animals w^ere supposed to have been in their ori- 
ginal condition not carnivorous. It is needless to 
" say that this has been for the most part the con- 
struction put upon the words of the Mosaic writer, 
until a clear perception of the creative design, 
which destined the tiger and the lion for flesh- 
eaters — and latterly the geological proof of flesh- 
eating monsters having existed among the pre- 
" Adamite inhabitants of the globe — rendered it 
necessaiy to ignore this meaning." We answer 



70 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGOXY. 



at once, the plain, clear teaching of the 31osa . 
record is, that animals were not carnivorous in 
Paradise : but there is no evidence that they vere 
not carnivorous after Adam and Eve fell. I know 
the objection of the physiologist : he says, it is fact 
that the viscera of a graminivorous animal, or a 
vegetable-eating animal, like the ox, are six times 
the length of its body : the viscera of a carnivorous 
animal, like the lion, are only three times the length 
of its body ; evidence therefore that the one is in- 
tended to eat grass and the other meant to eat flesh, 
hie also says the evidence is equally irresistible, from 
the strnctiire of the teeth of a graminivorous animal, 
a cow or an ox. that it is destined to eat grass or 
vegetables ; and that the teeth of the carnivorous 
animal, the canine teeth of the tiger and the lion, in- 
dicate that they are intended for tearing and feeding 
upon flesh. I admit the facts : I accept the distinction : 
bitt, what is a sufficient explanation, is admitted by 
physiologists — the Fall was not an unforeseen acci- 
dent in the mind of Him to whom the past and the 
future are all luminous ; and, therefore. He made these 
creatures with a prospective reference to the con- 
dition they should occupy in after ages. What is 
the prophecy of the millennial day ? That the lion 
shall eat straw like the ox : that the lion and the 
lamb shall lie down together. And what is the 
millennium? Just Paradise restored: just Eden 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGOXY. 



71 



broTiglit back again ; and therefore tlie evidence is 
clear that, as far as relates to Paradise, there were no 
deaths in the brnte creation. And therefore what we 
infer, and what I think is just and reasonable, is, 
that their teeth were made and their viscera arranged 
with a prospective reference to what should be ; the 
Fall not being an nn toward accident that overtook 
God, but a foreseen and provided-for contingency in 
the mind and in the wisdom of the Eternal. "\Ye 
know for certain that man did not eat animal food 
till the days of the flood ; that is certain ; and there 
was no necessity that he should ; and it is not yet 
demonstrated that animal food is essential to human 
health, or to human existence ; perhaps, if the 
English people took less of it they might not be 
more unhealthy; and perhaps if man's ]3hysical 
condition were different from what it is — if he had 
more fresh air, and fresh water, and healthy exer- 
cise, he might require — I am not a competent judge, 
and do not pretend to be a physician — less anima,] 
food than is requisite in the crowded air and con- 
fined occupations of a modern city. 

I ask you, is not the evidence clear from the facts 
I have adduced — and I have quoted Mr. Goodwin's 
leading difficulties — that it is not the Mosaic record 
that is at fault, but the learned writer's logic that is 
lame ; and if he had thought more, and reflected more, 
and read more, and wei2;hed more the force of evidence 



72 



THE MOSAIC CX)SMOGONT. 



he never would have dared to print what may prove 
injurious to the unreflecting multitude, sapping the 
foundations of many a conviction in God's word ? But 
just as mists and fogs are drawn up from the earth 
by the intensity of the sunbeams, and appear at 
first to darken the sun, and throw the earth into the 
shadow, but are by the same intense sunbeams dis- 
persed and dissolved, and the earth is covered with a 
richer splendour, and flowers and fruit ; so it has been 
with this holy book. The Bible has dra^Ti up these 
clouds, and mists, and fogs, partly from the swamps 
of Germany, partly from the worse swamps of mis- 
guided fancy and imagination ; but the same kind- 
ling splendour will dissolve them ; and men will see, 
after they have passed away, how frail is the logic 
of man, how lasting is the least word that God has 
spoken. 



73 



IV. 

MISINTERPRETATIONS. 

In the Scriptures, as we have seen, there are some 
things hard to be understood ; but there are no things 
impossible to be understood. Some things hard to be 
understood are to be expected in a revelation of the 
Infinite ; at least, that they will rise above our com- 
prehension, but not be against our convictions, and 
our judgment, and our reason. Persons have said, 
If you reject the doctrine of Transubstantiation, 
because it is incredible, you are bound, they say, 
to reject the doctrine of the Trinity, because it is 
equally so. I answer, the reasoning is not correct. 
Transubstantiation is a phenomenon that comes under 
the senses ; whether a thing be bread or flesh, be 
wine or human blood, is a question for the senses 
to settle ; and coming within the cognizance and 
into the region of the senses, we find they reject it, 
because it outrages all the testimonies of four of the 
senses together. But the doctrine of the Trinity is 
a doctrine confessedly above the region of the senses ; 
and when we fail to comprehend it, it is not because 



74 



MTSIXTERPRETATIOX.'^. 



it is against our senses or against oiir reason, for it 
is neither the one nor the other, but because it is 
vastly above both. Things above the comprehension 
of man must be in a revehition of an infinite God ; 
but things against the reason of man we maintain 
are not fonncl in the whole word of God. I have 
detained yon, perhaps not so mnch to the edification 
of some, bnt I am sure to the ins tr notion and benefit 
of others, in analyzing those Essays and Eeviewt^ 
which have made a great noise, and yet are really 
not worth the noise they have made : essavs. ir 
wonld have been nnfair and inexpedient to discuss, if 
it were not that they are read by, I may almost say. 
everybody. They are analyzed in the newspapers, 
they are bronght within every man's reach ; Uni- 
tarians are saying the Church of England is coming 
over to them: sceptics are saying. If men holding 
the doctrines of the Bible are entitled to £5,000 
a-year as bishops, or £500 a-year as presbyters, 
why shonld men like ns, denying eveiy doctrine of 
the Bible, be excluded? It is sad that men who 
receive the bread of the Church of England are 
permitted in it to teach doctrines totally contrary to 
the Articles of that Church. I do not ask, why are 
these men in the Church of England ? That rest- 
with that Church, to which I have no right to dictate, 
and to which it would be presumption to give advice. 
But these men do not merely impugn the doctrines 



MIS I X T E R PRET A TIO N S . 



75 



of the Clinrch of England ; they are sapping the 
foundations of Christendom itself. It is not a Church 
of England question ; it is a question of Christianity. 
If they be right, you have not an inch of ground on 
Tvhich you can stand in reference to a future world' ; if 
they be wrong, the very plausibility, and the beauty, 
and the elegance with which they state their errors, are 
only, in my judgment, the stronger reasons why we 
should unfrock the errors, unearth the fallacies, and 
show that however splendid may be the eye, how- 
ever magnificent the colours of the viper, it is a 
viper still. I maintain that these writers — and I 
have shown it, by quotatiuns from their writings 
— are wrong. It is true my lectures and argu- 
ments have been meant for the ripe Christian, 
who needs no such discussion : a thorough Chris- 
tian says, I don't care what these men write, nor 
what anybody else writes ; I know in whom I 
have believed, and that my refuge is the Eock of 
Ages ; and nothing can shake me out of that. 
That is quite true ; but there are young men 
stepping into life, whose minds are open and 
accessible to the seductive charms of a splendid 
and a fascinating rhetoric ; some of whom are 
anxious to get a reason for renouncing the idea of 
a ]3i^esent and a heart -searching God. Surely then 
it is most proper, while we give bread to Christians, 
that we should show that the reasons against Chris- 



76 



MISINTERPKETATIOXS. 



tianity are not tenable ; and tliat the argiaments 
adduced by these men are fallacies and sophisms 
that will not hold water. I have gone over most 
of these Essays. In my last I was obliged to go into 
what one may call scientific proof; but it is a most 
interesting fact that when the infidel — and I would 
not call these men infidels if I thought it would hurt 
their feelings, or give the least offence ; probably 
they do not mean to be infidels ; but their reasoning 
really and fairly canies to that position — goes into 
the sources of science, you can follow and meet 
him there. I maintain, what I am prepared to 
prove — and geology is the science to which I have 
paid some attention, and for a good many years — 
that in the sphere of geology alone, instead of the 
" Cosmogony of the World," which is the title of one 
of these Essays, being justified by the phenomena 
of science, it is refuted and exploded by the most 
brilliant and recent discoveries. I am surprised 
how one who seems to be acquainted with the ele- 
ments of that science should pretend to show that 
if geology be true, according to him Moses must 
have been an ignorant, ill-informed, unscientific 
writer. I maintain that geology is true; but I 
maintain, and I showed in my last lecture that 
Moses, while not inspired to teach geology, wherever 
he touches the confines of science, or touches the 
phenomena of nature, in every instance Moses re- 



M rSINTERPRETATIONS. 



77 



mains scientifically correct; and the most recent 
discoveries of science liave proved that he is so. At 
the same time I repeat, the Bible was not given 
us, nor was it meant, to teach us geology ; and when 
Mr. Goodwin, one of the essayists, tells us that 
the Mosaic idea was, that the sun moved round the 
earth — which would be a very great trouble to the 
sun, considering the vastness of his size, and the 
smallness of the earth ; — and that Moses understood 
it so, but that modem science has disproved it, and 
shown that Moses was wrong — I maintain Moses 
speaks like a philosopher and that Mr. Goodwin 
talks nonsense. 1 alluded to the fact, if you look 
into an almanac, an almanac scientifically ad- 
justed, you will find it there stated in the calendar, 
" The sun rises on the 21st day of March at 6 
o'clock in the morning, and sets at 6 o'clock in 
" the evening." A tyro from a school might say. 
How ignorant the editor of the Almanac or Pocket 
Book must be when he talks of the sun rising and 
the sun setting ; whereas everybody knows that the 
sun does not rise nor set ; it is the earth merely that 
moves in its orbit and rotates on its axis ! Yet you 
see that science, when it wishes to convey practical 
information, speaks in the language of ordinary con- 
versation, in the popular phrase, and justly so. So 
Moses, teaching the knowledge of God, teaches it 
in the formulas of ordinary speech ; and you might 



78 



MISLNTERPRETATIOJ^S. 



as well speak against Sir Isaac Xewton, or ^Sii 
Dayid Brewster, or the editors of all otir astro- 
nomical, nautical, and common almanacs, as' being 
unscientific men, because tbey do not express in 
strictly scientific formulas what everybody under- 
stands when expressed in the formulas of popular 
speech. 

In this lecture I will turn your attention to two 
or three passages of Professor Jowett's Essay, not 
so much for the purpose of refuting them, as for 
giving me an opportunity of explaining many things 
which Christians frequently mistake. The truth is, 
and I repeat it, that these Essays, from first to last, 
with the exception of Mr. Goodwin's on Geology, 
haA^e not a single original idea ; they present merely 
resuscitated ghosts that were laid a hundred years 
ago ; they have merely dragged up and clothed in 
new forms objections to Scripture _ that were urged 
by Tom Paine, by Hume, by Voltaire, by Eousseau, 
by D'Alembert, by Diderot, and recently by Strauss, 
and other men of that school. There is nothing new 
under the sun ; and certainly there is nothing new 
in these Essays and Eeviews. The only startling 
thing has been that in former times it was Paine, a 
vulgar infidel ; Eousseau, a sensualist and an infidel ; 
Hume, a philosopher and an historian; men de- 
riving emolument from nobody, but from their own 
exertionsj that stated these things ; but thephenome- 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



79 



non of 1861 is that theEev. Frederick Temple, D.D., 
Chaplain-in-Ordinary to tlie Queen, Head Master 
of Eugby School; the Eev. Eowland Williams, 
D.D., Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew, St. 
David's College, Lampeter, Vicar of Broad Chalke, 
Wilts ; the Eev. Baden Powell, M.A., F.E.S., late 
Savilian Professor in the University of Oxford ; the 
Eev. Henry Bristowe Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great 
Staughton, Hunts ; and the Eev. Benjamin J owett, 
M.A,, Eegins Professor of Greek in the Univer- 
sity of Oxford; that men paid, Ksworn, and en- 
gaged to teach the sound doctrines of the Thirty- 
nine Articles, should use their position and the 
emoluments that accrue from it, in undermining 
and sapping every doctrine they have subscribed, 
and in exhausting the word of God of its signifi- 
cance and its authority. If that were a solitary idea 
of mine, however just, it would not perhaps be ac- 
cepted ; but I find since I began to point out the errors 
in these Essays, that those who thought they were 
not so very far wrong as I made them out, will be 
more convinced now when I tell them, that a document 
signed by 6000 ministers of the Church of England 
has been presented to the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury ; and in that document they state substan- 
tially that these writers are simply infidels ; that 
they have renounced and that they have destroyed 
every distinguishing doctrine and tenet of Christi- 



80 MISINTERPRETATIONS. 

anity ; that according to them there are no miracles 
in the Bible, and that miracles are hindrances, not 
aids to Christianity ; that according to them there is 
no such thing as inspiration ; that according to them 
the writers of the Bible were some of them blunderers, 
some of them ignoramuses, and all of them anything 
but infallible in what they have stated. If these things 
be true, there is an end of all the foundations of our 
faith. I maintain they are not true ; I maintain the 
reasoning of these men is false ; I have detected 
them in numerous errors ; and I have shown you in 
previous lectures that what they have stated is not 
tenable, nor logical, nor borne out by the facts of 
science, or by fair and impartial exegesis of the word 
of God. 

The last of the writers to whom I intend to refer, 
is Professor Jowett : he is a man unquestionably of 
great talent : he writes with great perspicuity ; one 
only grieves that a man of such talent should be 
made an instrument of teaching what I hope and 
believe he will live to renounce and deplore. He 
says, for instance, in opening his Essay, which is on 
the Interpretation of Scripture, *' It is not, therefore, 
" to philological or historical difficulties that the 
" greater part of the uncertainty in the interpreta- 
" tion of Scripture is to be attributed. No ignorance 
" of Hebrew or Greek is sufficient to account for it. 

Even the Vedas and the Zendavesta, though beset 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



81 



by obscurities of language probably greater than 
are found in any portion of the Bible, are inter- 
** preted, at least by European scbolars, according to 
fixed rules, and beginning to be clearly under- 
stood." Xow, what he says here is, first, that the 
Vedas and the Zendavesta have obscurities of 
language probably greater than the Bible ; I main- 
tain infinitely greater; but he says they are now 
beginning to be understood by scholars ; but the 
Bible is not yet understood or aright interpreted 
by anybody. I submit that on all essential truths 
there is but one common interpretation of the Bible. 
Take all sections of the Christian Church ; take the 
Church of England, as represented, if you do not 
like its Articles, as represented by its best and its 
most distinguished ministers ; take the Church of 
Scotland, as represented by its best and most 
enlightened ministers ; take the Independents, the 
Baptists, the Wesleyans, all the Christian denomina- 
tions. They hold one common creed in everything 
that is essential ; and where do they differ ? Simply 
about forms, and ceremonies, rites, and other ex- 
ternals. I say the common concurrence of Christ- 
endom in one view of what the Bible means, though 
not an argument, is a strong presumption, that there 
is something in the Bible so plain that the wayfaring 
man may not err therein ; while there are mysteries 
and difficulties, we admit, on which perhaps we may 

G 



82 



MISINTERPRETAXmS. 



differ, and about wliicli we must agree to differ. 
Professor Jowett says, in page 341, "He wlio reflects 
** on the multitude of explanations wMch already 
exist of the ' number of the beast,' ' the two 
* witnesses,' 'the little horn,' 'the man of sin,' 
" who observes the manner in which these explana- 
" tions have varied with the political movements of 
*' our own time, will be irnwilling to devote himself 
" to a method of inquiry in which there is so little 
'' appearance of certainty or progress." Is this fair? 
Because men differ upon unfulfilled prophecy, does 
it follow that they must differ about plain doctrinal 
statements or historical records ? Unfulfilled pro- 
phecy v»-e at once admit to be difficult. I think 
it is our duty to study it ; I'm sure it is our duty 
to study it ; but I have always admitted, when 
I have stated what seems to me irresistibly the 
explanation of unfulfilled prophecy, that I may be 
wrong. For instance, when I state that the man 
of sin is the portrait of the papacy, under its head, 
the successive Popes of Pome, I am convinced I am 
right ; but there are some good men who think that 
I am not ; for instance, more than one excellent friend 
and minister, known to all that love the truth, enter- 
taining the most perfect hatred of popery, yet think 
that the man of sin in the 2nd chapter of 2 Thessa- 
lonians does not refer to the Pope, but that it por- 
trays some monster of evil who is yet to appear at 



:\[ISIXTERPr.ETATIOXS. 



83 



the close of tliis economy. I tliink they are wrong ; 
but tlien I can quite understand liow good men may- 
differ ahout the interpretation of prophecy. In the 
same manner all the great epochs of prophecy, the 
great chronological epochs, I have constantly stated, 
what I believe, expire in 1867 ; I have not pro- 
phesied what some newspapers have prophesied for 
me, that the world is to be finished up in 1867 ; but 
I have stated that the great chronological epochs 
expire in 1867 ; and that what follows then is the 
unchronological era, whatever it may be. On my 
theory and on my principle of interpretation I am 
right ; but I need not tell you that other men, 
abler than I am, and just as reverential of the word 
of God, think somewhat differently, and hold that 
only the great periods that relate to the destruc- 
tion of the Papacy expire in 1867. I can under- 
stand how good men, equally sincere, may differ in 
their interpretations of the chronology of unfulfilled 
prophecy ; but while admitting all this, I maintain 
it is not fair, it is not candid in Professor Jowett to 
say that because men differ in the apjolication of the 
man of sin, in the explanation of the two witnesses, 
in the exposition of the chronology of unfulfilled 
prophecy, therefore they must differ in the reading 
and understanding of tlie plainest passages of the 
Gospel, or the xlcts of the Apostles, or the Epistles 
of St. Paul. His reasoning is false ; his conclusion is 



84 



MISrS'TERPEETATIOXS, 



not tenable. He tlien proceeds to say. In like 
manner, lie ^ho notices the circumstance tliat tlie 
" explanations of tlie first cliapter of Genesis have 
slowly clianged, and as it were retreated before tlie 
advance of geology, will be unwilling to add 
** anotber to the spurious reconcilements of science 
and revelation/' I maintain that tbe first cbapter 
of tbe Book of Genesis bas not retreated before tbe 
advance of geology, tbat it stands tbe ordeal of tbe 
severest scientific investigation; and tbat Moses 
at tbis day stands fortb geologically true and 
spiritually inspired : and tbat all tbe recent dis- 
coveries of geology bave not toucbed a text, no, 
not a word, of tbe inspired record of Moses. It 
is not fair, tberefore, for one wbo must know tbe 
subject as well as I do, to assert tbat Moses retreats- 
before Dr. Buckland. or tbat tbe Mosaic record is in- 
compatible witb tbe latest discoveries of geology ; 
wben be ougbt to know tbat tlie ripest and tbe best 
geological scholars bave admitted tbat tbere is 
nothing discovered in geology to shake in tbe least 
degree our confidence in tbe Mosaic record. The 
only thing tbat has come up within the last year is 
-sphere certain flints have been discovered in tbe drift, 
flints that are shaped like axes, and found in strata 
tbat are believed to be pre- Adamite. Certain geolo- 
gical scholars have been examining these ; some say, 
here is evidence that there w^as a human race before 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



85 



Adam and Eve ; that there were savages before 
Adam and Eve were created. It is very foolish to 
leap so soon to such a conclusion; just wait, and 
watch the discussion of the discovery of these flint 
heads, these arrow-headed flints; wait and watch; 
and you will see that the issue will be that they 
will fall in with the universal law, the universal 
fact or evidence which proves that the present 
economy of our globe is not above 6000 years old, 
however old may have been the dynasties of the great 
geological epochs that preceded the days of Adam 
and Eve. But he proceeds in another passage to 
make a very bold statement ; he says, " The failure 
of a prophecy is never admitted, in spite of Scrip- 
" ture and of history ;" and he quotes Jeremiah 
xxxvi. 30, where he says there is evidence of the 
failure of a prophecy. The best way, as I learnt in 
arguing with Eoman Catholic priests, is, whenever 
they quote a text, to make it a rule to go to the text 
they quote ; and in nine cases out of ten I have found 
the best confutation of what it was quoted for in the 
very text^ quoted to establish the position of the 
antagonist. He says in Jeremiah xxxvi. 30, there is 
evidence of a prophecy unfulfilled. I cannot make 
out what is the prophecy not fulfilled that he dis- 
covers; " Thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim king of 
" Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne 
" of David ; and his dead body shall be cast out in 



86 



MISIXTEEPRETATIOXS, 



" tlie dav to tlie lieat, and in the niglit to tlie frc-t." 
He says tliat prophecy has been unfulfilled. Vrell. 
noTT, if he wonld give ns some evidence of ^vhat he 
says, one would be most thankful ; but he merely 
states the prophecy is unfulfilled. Bui, mark you, 
suppose there be no historic record of its fulfilment, 
that does not prove it is imfulfilled. It is one rhing 
to say the prophecy is contradicted by fact ; it is 
another thing to say there is no evidence of the pro- 
phecy being fulfilled. It may be perfectly true that a 
pro23hecy is contained in Jeremiah, and tho.t no rec ord 
yet exists in the Bible or otherwise of the lullilm-nt 
of that prophecy : that does not prove that the prophet 
is not inspired; it merely proves that God has not 
recorded the fulfilment of the prophecy : this is alL 
But what he means to say has been contradicted is, 
the prediction that there shall be none to sit upon his 
throne. Xow I turn to 2 Kings xxiv. lo, where 
there is an historic allusion to this : '-'And he carried 
away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king's 
mother, and the king's wives, and his ofdcers, and 
" the mighty of the land, those carried he into cap- 
tivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. And all the men 
" of might, even seven thotisand, and crafrsmen and 
*^ smiths a thousand, and all that were strong and apt 
" for war." That is the passage referring to Jehoiachin. 
Then it mentions how Jehoiachin reigned in the 
stead of his father Jehoiakim; "Jehoiachin was 



MISIXTKRPRETxVTIONS. 



87 



" eighteen 3'ears old when he began to reign, and he 
" reigned in Jerusalem three months. And he did 
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, 
according to all that his father had done." AVell, 
what seems to me to be his notion is this : that this 
Jehoialvim was not to have a successor on his throne ; 
that is, that his dynasty was to be SAvept away ; well, 
the historic record is that Jehoiachin his son did sit 
three months on it ; that is true ; but at the end of 
three months he was swept off, and the throne with 
him, and he was carried into captivity in Babylon. 
The prediction that he was to have no one to sit upon 
his throne is the accepted conventional phrase for 
what occurred — his dynasty shall not be perpetuated : 
it has not been perpetuated ; the only fact being that 
his son reigned three months, which was a very short 
time, and then that his dynasty ceased for ever, and 
he was carried away into Babylon. It appears to me 
that the prophecy was strictly fulfilled ; and to 
maintain that a prediction of a dynasty ceasing to 
reign is contradicted because history adds that one 
son reigned three months, shows that he must have 
been very hard up indeed for objections against 
the Bible when he felt it his duty to lay hold of such 
a trifling incident, and to maintain from it that the 
prediction of an extinguished dynast}^ was not 
fulfilled because one son reigned for three months 



MISINTERPPvETATIOXS. 



upon tlie tlirone, before lie and that tln^one were 
swept awa}^ and all carried into captivitj^ 

Then in page 345 he says in one passage, which is 
very sad : " There is no appearance in their writings 
" that the evangelists or apostles had any inward 
" gift, or were subject to any power external to them 
different from that of preaching or teaching which 
they daily exercised ; nor do they anywhere lead 
us to suppose that they were free from error or 
infirmity. St. Paul writes like a Christian teacher, 
exhibiting all the emotions and vicissitudes of 
human feeling, speaking, indeed, with authority, 
" but hesitating in difficult cases, and more than 
once correcting himself, corrected too by the 
" course of events in his expectation of the coming of 
" Christ." I maintain this is most unfair and un- 
worthy. Because Peter erred as an individual, and 
was rebuked by Paul as a fellow-Christian, it does 
not follow^that they erred as the amanuenses of the 
Holy Ghost ; they were inspired to record what is 
infallible truth; and no incidental errors in their 
private career in the least degTee touch their wiitten 
and inspired records. Then he says Paul corrects 
himself; but that is to me the strongest evidence that 
Paul was inspired- AThere does he correct himself^ 
In certain passages he says, " I speak this of myself;" 
but the very exceptional statement proves what was 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



the law of his writing — that he was inspired to state 
the rest ; and that here he interposes, and puts 
up a mark, or sign, and he says, This is not in- 
spired ; this is an opinion of my own, which I am 
not warranted in stating by the inspiration of the 
Spirit of God ; and it is on a matter of detail, of no 
vital or essential moment. The very exception 
proves the rule ; and the warning of the apostle that 
he stated this of himself is evidence that he stated 
the rest not of himself, hut, in the words of Scripture, 
as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. To say that 
Paul was corrected in his statements about the 
coming of Christ is unfair. I maintain that he was 
not. And here is evidence that the prophetic school, 
as it is called, has seized the true idea. We main- 
tain that Paul predicts the second advent of the Lord, 
and that he predicts it constantly. But in that 
passage, which Professor Jowett has evidently mis- 
taken, so accomplished a Greek scholar must have 
forgotten his Greek Testament, or he never would 
have made this statement. It is in 2 Thess. ii., 
where Paul warns them not to be troubled in 
Spirit, as though the Lord were at hand, or the day 
of the Lord were at hand. There are two distinct 
phrases in the Greek Testament; one is, ''the 
''day of the Lord," eyyvg eavL, "is near;" the 
other is, " the Lord," erearriKEy, " stood in the midst 
" of you." What the apostle says to the Thes- 



90 



MISIXTERPRETATIOXS. 



salonians is, Do not be deceived, as if the day pre- 
dicted were already come, and Clirist were personally 
present in the midst of you. That is what he says. 
And when he speaks in other parts of the day of 
Christ being at hand, his meaning is plain. The 
Chnrch of Christ is always looked npon as a nnity ; 
and the attitude of that Church, according to the 
apostolic statement (I wish that people would look 
at it more in this light), is looking back to a cross on 
which redemption was wrought out, and looking 
every day for the advent of Christ, crowned with 
many crowns, to take the kingdom, and to reig'n. 
The attitude of a Christian ought to be — what I 
regret it is not always — looking for Christ to come 
in the clouds of heaven ; not sure but he may be 
here to-morrow, not sure but he may be here next 
week. One day he will come ; that is certain ; the 
attitude of the Cliristian is not knowing at what day 
or at what hour, at midnight or mid-day, he may come ; 
but always looking and waiting for him. Does not 
the bride look for the bridegroom ? So the Church is 
Christ's bride ; and it was the sleepy virgins, the 
unbelieving, that slumbered and slept; it was the 
five wise virgins that kept their lamps burning, and 
were always looking out to see when the bridegroom 
would come, and always listening to hear the tramp 
of his feet as he comes to this world again. There- 
fore Professor Jowett's inference is wrong. He 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



91 



states another thing very strange, and the "very 
smallness of his instances indicates how ill off he 
must have been for the proofs of what he states ; — he 
says there is no perfect accuracy or agreement in 
the accoimts of the evangelists : " One supposes 
" the original dwelling-place of our Lord's parents 
" to have been Bethlehem ; another Is azareth and 
he quotes Matt. ii. 1, and Luke ii. 4. Let us go to 
the passage : he quotes, first, Matt. ii. 1, as evidence 
that Matthew believed the dAvelling-place of our 
Lord's parents to have been at Bethlehem. Yrell, I 
turn to the passage : " Xow when Jesus was born in 
" Bethlehem of Judea;" so he is C|uite right there, 
• in quoting Matthew as saying that Jesus was born in 
Bethlehem of Judea. So, too, he quotes the 22nd verse 
of the same chapter : " When he heard that Archelaus 
" did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod, 

he was afraid to go thither ; notwithstanding, 
" being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside 
*' into the parts of Galilee : and he came and dwelt 
*' in a city called Nazareth." This also plainly 
proves that the dwelling-place of our Lord's pa- 
rents was Bethlehem. But he says, if we turn to 
Luke ii. 4, we shall find that Luke believed it was 
Kazareth. Kow then let us see if Luke does believe 
so. I will read from the beginning of the chapter : 
" And it came to pass in those days, that there went 

out a decree from C^sar Augustus, that all the 



MISIXTERPRETATIOXS. 



world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first 

made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And 

all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the 
*' city of Xazareth, into Judea, unto the city of 

David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he 
" was of the house and lineage of David :) to be 

taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great 
*^ with child. And so it was that while they were 

there the days were accomplished that she should be 
"delivered." Where was that ? Unquestionably at 
Bethlehem. There is no assertion here that the 
child was born in Nazareth; they went up from 
Xazareth to Bethlehem ; and there it is said Mary's 
child was bom, a Saviour, Christ the Lord. How 
rash of Professor J owett to appeal to passages which, 
when honestly looked at, prove the reverse pre- 
cisely of what he quotes them for ! I do not say that 
Professor Jowett is an unlearned man, but I do say 
he is a very careless man ; and if he had been at 
school, I am quite sure he would have been kept in 
a good many hours, and made go over his lesson 
again, in order that he might not fall into such 
schoolboy mistakes as some that he has pei^petrated 
in this very Essay. In another passage, at page 347, 
he says there are inaccuracies of language in the 
epistles of St. Paul. I maintain there are no inaccu- 
racies of language. The Greek of St. Paul is not 



MISINTERPRETATIOXS. 



Attic Greek. His language lias not what is called 
Attic salt : it is Greek with a tincture of Hebraisms 
in it, but not the less expressive Greek on that 
account ; and perhaps a Greek employed because 
best fitted to convey in distinct formulas what would 
have been misunderstood if the same formulas em- 
ployed by the heathen had been used to convey the 
more marvellous things of the kingdom of God. The 
Greek, we admit at once, of the Apostle Paul is not 
the purest ; that of Luke in the Acts of the Apostles 
is much purer ; John's Greek in the Gospel is not 
pure classic Greek, but it is not the worse on that 
account ; and it may have been the more appropriate 
on that account to be the medium of those truths 
which ancient Greek was altogether a stranger to, 
and which the formulas of ancient Greek might have 
misconveyed or misinterpreted to the scholars, and 
readers, and hearers of that age. For instance, 
in a Scotchman's English there are what are 
called Scotticisms — those peculiarities of expression 
which few Scotchmen get entireh' over. Irish- 
men who speak English retain a tincture of their 
native land, both in accent and in the form of 
phrases ; but the phrases are not the worse on that 
account. And some of the veiy Scotticisms of 
Scottish English are extremely expressive, and 
might perhaps be grafted into the English language 
with some degree of benefit. So in the apostle's 



94 



IMISIXTERPRETATIOXS. 



Greek there are what are called Hebraisms ; but 
tliose Hebraisms have an expressiveness that makes 
ITS thank God that they are there. And when God 
inspired Paul, and inspired John, and inspired Luke, 
he took them as they were; not translating them 
into heathen scholars first, and then inspiring them ; 
but selecting them as they were, with all their 
peculiarities, and inspiring them as they were to 
record the great truths of eternity. 

I turn to another passage in this Essay. I find he 
is exceedingly annoyed at the term "inspiration." 
" If the term inspiration," he says, "were to fall 
" into disuse, no fact of nature, or history, or lan- 
" guage, no event in the life of man, or dealings of 
" God with him, v/ould be in any degree altered. 
" The word itself is but of yesterday." What can 
he mean by this ? Let him open St. Paul's Epistle 
to Timoth3^ Professor Jowett says " the word 

inspiration is but of yesterday ;" and that if it were 
given up it would not matter. Well, I read, "All 
" Scripture is given by inspiration of God;" that is 
not of yesterday; that is eighteen hundred yeai^ 
old. But if you say that inspiration is not the true 
translation, we will not object to a more literal trans- 
lation. What is the original? Haui]. y ypacpi] 
QeoTTvevcjTOQ, " All Scripture is breathed into by 
God." If he does not like the word inspiration^ by 
all means get rid of it; but then he must take 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



95 



tlie translation I have given, All 'Scriptoe is 
" breatLed into." "Well, tlie diflerence between 
inspiratio and deoTrvevaroQ is, tliat tlie latter is a 
a Greek adjective, ''breathed into by God;" and the 
former is a Latin noun — that is all the difference; 
but the idea that underlies both is snbstantially the 
same ; and when Professor J owett asserts that inspi- 
ration is a word of yesterday, he must have forgotten 
some very weighty parts of that book which he pro- 
fesses to teach. 

He is very anxious to show that a great deal in 
the Bible is inapplicable to us. He says, for in- 
stance, " If a missionary were to endanger the ^^ublic 
'' peace, and come, like the Apostles, saying, ' I ought 
*' ' to obey God rather than man,' it is obvious that 
" the most Cliiistian of magistrates could not allow 
" him (say in India or Xew Zealand) to shield him- 

self under the authority of these words." Quite 
true ; but still it is equally correct. For instance, 
if a man believes it is his duty publicly to worship 
God in the midst of the land, if a magistrate inter- 
feres and says, It is against the law to do so, the 
answer of the Christian, I believe the answer of all 
true Christians, would be, We must obey God rather 
than man. That is as applicable this very day as it 
was when our Lord first taught it. But it is here 
where the distinction lies — if you do so, you must 
take the consequences ; the magistrate may put you 



96 



MISmXERPRETATIONS. 



in prison, but tliat does not alter your conviction or 
duty; that does not laake tlie words inapplicable. 
Wlienever there is a collision between the most 
beloved of sovereigns ordering you to do this and 
God clearly commanding you to do it not, a Chris- 
tian says, I will not do this, because I must obey 
God rather than man; the magistrate says, Tou 
must take the consequences, and he says, Very well, 
I must; but my duty is plain; and the sentiment 
that Professor Jowett tries to prove to be obsolete 
and inapplicable, is just as applicable to-day as it 
was when it was first uttered. He says, "The 
" Christian scheme of redemption has been staked on 
" two figurative expressions of St. Paul, to which 
" there is no parallel in any other part of Scripture 
" (1 Cor. XV. 22. ' For as in Adam all die, even so 
" 'in Christ shall all be made alive,' and the corre- 
" spending passage in Eomans v.l2) ; notwithstanding 

the declaration of the Old Testament as also of the 
" Xew, ' Every soul should bear its own iniquity ;' and 
" 'neither this man sinned nor his parents.' " His 
idea is, that we are not included in Adam's ruin, be- 
cause Scripture says, " Every soul shall bear its own 

iniquity." But we answer at once, it is a matter 
of fact that we are included in Adam's ruin ; it is not 
a question of philosophical discussion, but a ques- 
tion of fact. Take that babe, the new-born infant ; it 
cries, it is pained, it sorrows, it is sick, it dies^ 



MISIXTERPRETATIOXS, 

Why ? That infant never committed a sin, it never 
spoke ?.n untrno word, it never did an imholy 
act; why does it weep, and sigh, and groan, and 
sicken, and. die? Because in Adam all die: it is 
not a question of metaphysics, it is a foot. Well, 
he says, that is contradicted in the passage, " Every 
" soul shall bear its own iniquity." But he must 
not put passages in opposition that are not in 
opposition. The prophet is speaking to the Jews : 
and he says, You shall no more say, our fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and our teeth stand on edge : hut 
in God's judicial proceedings with you as a nation 
and a people, every one of you shall hear his own 
iniquity ; if you Jews will do right, your fathers' sins 
shall not be visited upon you ; if you Jews do wrong, 
your fathers' sins will be visit-ed upon you. But we 
say that in the higher matter of redemption no man 
will be cast into hell for his relation to A dam ; not 
one. Xo man will perish eternally, because of what 
he has inheiited from Adam; if you perish, it is 
because you reject the Gospel of Christ ; if you are 
saved, it is because Christ died, and you believe in 
his availing and saving name. No man will be 
able at the judgment seat to say, I am condemned 
because Adam sinned ; it will be from first to last. 
^' Ye would not be saved ;" Ye would not come 
" unto me that ye might have life." ''This is the 
" condemnation that light is come into the world, 

H 



98 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



and' tBat men have loved darkness rather than 
" light." 

In another passage ho speaks of the discrepancies 
of Scripture, at page 376 : he also speaks of David's 
imprecations against his enemies, a reference which 
I have already examined. Again, he says, "The 

time vrill come when educated men will be no 
^ more able to believe that the words ' Out Of Egypt 
^-'have I called my son' (Matthew ii*15; Hose$ 

xi. 1 ), were intended by the prophet to refer to the 

return of Joseph and Mary from Egypt:'' yet 
the Gospel expressly says so; if Professor Jowett 
bo inspired, of course the evangelist Matthew, in 
saying that this passage refers to Joseph and Mary 
coming out of Egypt, is wrong ; but if Matthew be 
inspired, then Professor Jowett has been talking non- 
sense. Then he says they will be no more able to 
believe this "than they are now able to believe the 
" Eoman Catholic explanation of Gen. iii. 15. Ipsa 
^ conteret caput tuum ; she will bruise thy head." But 
we never believed that, because the Eoman Catholic 
version is wrong; the Hebrew is hu^ the mascu- 
line gender lie ; the Eoman Catholic version has trans- 
lated it the feminine she ; and they apply it to the 
Yii'gin Mary. But it is not fair in him to o^^uote'a 
Eoman Catholic mistranslation as if it were the exact 
record of the word of God. 

Now I have given you some specimens of Professor 



MISINTERPRETATIONS. 



99 



Jowett's interpretation. I maintain that no Christian 
need be alarmed because these men impugn or try to 
impugn the sacred record; in every instance they 
are wrong ; in every objection they are demonstrably 
wrong. And the best way would be, let these men 
meet before any audience, let any one who under- 
stands the word of God, and has read a little, 
meet them; and I venture t$> assert they shall be 
proved and demonstrated to have libelled God's 
holy word, to have made unjust charges ; and what- 
ever be their m-otive — and I have no right to impute 
a motive — or whatever be th^ir end, these men have 
taken their objection, not, I believe, at first hand, 
from personal investigation, but from the wi'itings of 
Paine, of Hume, of Voltaire, of Strauss, and other 
sceptics ; and they have paraded them before the 
people of the nineteenth century as if they were the 
marvellous discoveries of the seven essayists, upset- 
ting the Bible, instead of being the old and obsolete 
objections that have been repelled and replied to over 
and over again by reflecting and thinking minds. 

God's word is true. And the objections of these 
men, I believe, will in the long run only lead to a 
more thorough and effectual vindication of that 
word ; and. the issue will be, that sooner may Cali- 
gula command the clouds that they shall not rain 
upon his royal head ; sooner may Xerxes bind the 
waves of the Hellespont by casting a chain across it ; 



100 



MISIXTEEPIlETATIO>v^ S. 



sooner may Canute repel the advancing tide, tlian all 
the objections of these seven essayists for one moment 
repel that tide, each wave of which retreats for a 
little only to come up in greater volume and with 
greater force ; till the whole earth is covered with 
the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the 
channels of the great deep. 



HBO m: 



101 



V. 

IXSPIEATION. 

I WISH to show what is meant by St. Paul prononnc* 
ing all Scripture inspired of God, in 2 Timothy iii. 16 ; 
and what is the extent of this inspiration ? Is it some- 
thing different from the teaching of the Spirit in the 
hearts, the consciences, and the minds of ordinary 
believers ? A revelation must be distinguished from 
a discoveiy. A discovery is something that man 
makes ; as, for instance, the discovery of the monu- 
ments of Kineveh, the discovery of the remains of 
Carthage, the discovery of the Egyptian antiquities, 
the discovery of America. These are results reached 
by man, and these results may be improved and en- 
larged by subsequent investigation. A revelation is 
not something that man makes, but something that 
God gives. A discovery is made by man, and by 
man can be improved ; a revelation is given from 
God, and by God alone can be added to. AVe have 
in the Bible a revelation given by God, not a dis- 
cover)^ originated by man. The apostles did not 
clutch the knowledge by main force from heaven ; 
God gave them the lessons that they taught, and in- 
spired them to teach them. There is a distinction 



102 



INSPIRATION. 



perhaps between reyelation and inspiration. That 
was revelation when God spoke from the midst of the 
burning bush; it was revelation when his own 
mysterious finger wrote upon the plaster, Mene, 
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin ; but it is inspiration when 
he takes a human being, sets that human being apart 
for this purpose, inspires into his mind the thoughts 
he is to teach, and gives him or guides him to such 
language as will most clearly, faithfully, and fully 
convey that knowledge to all mankind. All Sciip- 
ture is deowvevaTOQ, that is, breathed into or in- 
spired by the Spirit of God. It seems absurd to set 
to prove what is proved sufficiently by being divinely 
stated. If Paul was inspired, his words, " all Scrip- 
" ture is inspired," settle the controversy. But it is 
possible to give additional reasons for your acquies- 
cence in what the apostle says ; and some of those 
reasons are as follow. The sacred penmen assert that 
they are inspired ; they say, We speak not in words 
which man's wisdom teacheth, but in words which 
the Holy Ghost teacheth;" and in another part we 
read, " As the Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of his 
" servant David ;" and again, God, w^ho at sundry 
times and in divers manners spake in times past by 
the prophets, hath, in these last days spoken unto 
** us by his Son ;" and that speech heard on Palestine 
13 made a fixture and a perpetuity within the compass 
"of the sacred volume. The sacred penmen prove 



INSPIRATION. 



103 



they were inspired by the fact that they did miracles. 
What is a miracle ? It is the inspiration of omnipo- 
tent power. What is a text in the Bible ? The in- 
spiration of omniscient truth. The man who could 
§o a miracle must have had a truth to convey^ 
which that miracle was to be the seal ; the miracle 
being God's omnipotent arm holding out a divine 
truth for man to receive ; the omnipotent power exhi- 
bited in the miracle being the guarantee that divine 
inspiration was in the truth which that miracle 
^attested. They did miracles, confessed by their 
friends, admitted by their foes, ascribed to the wicked 
one, but never denied as supernatural deeds. 
. These sacred penmen, who were thus inspired, 
uttered predictions which have been minutely ful- 
filled. Let any one take the 2nd chapter of 2 Thes- 
salonians, that describes a great apostacy about to 
arise, headed by a chief bishop who was to rule it ; 
let him take each trait in that magnificent and exact 
portrait, and let him compare it, if he has a thorough 
knowledge of that Church, with the distinctive fea- 
_;tures of the Church of Eome ; and he will find it im- 
,,possible otherwise to conclude than that the apostle 
=^w the whole thing before him, that he delineated 
^it under the guidance of unerring wisdom ; and that 
^^not by a happy guess, but by immediate inspiration, 
^^Jhe revealed the picture that was to pass into history, 
^ and be embodied in the experience and before the 



104 



IXSPIEATIOy. 



eyes of all mankind. But a difficult question, that lias 
excited considerable controversy, remains : how have 
these men been inspired ? what was the nature of this 
inspiration which these men claim ? We cannot answer 
the how, but we can assert the fact. You cannot ex- 
plain how Satan sometimes throws a thought into 
your mind, a burning spark into your heart, a trou- 
bling touch into your conscience ; you cannot explain 
how the soul actuates this mechanism of nerve and 
muscle, through which it conveys its volitions to the 
outer world ; but that these are facts none will deny. 
It is possible to embrace a truth, though it may be 
impossible for us to explain how that truth is carried 
into practical development. This only we assert, 
that whilst these men were inspired, and inspired in 
the highest sense of that word, all their individual 
peculiarities were and are perfectly retained. We 
know what every one who reads the New Testament 
must detect, that each writer in the Kew Testament 
has his own peculiar style. The st^'le of Addison in 
the "Spectator," differs totally from the style of Dr. 
Johnson in the *'Eambler;" again, the style of Dr. 
Chalmers is as different as possible from the style of 
Robert Hall ; and the style of Eobert Hall is different^ 
from the style of subsequent writers who have written 
upon the same subjects. And so marked is the idio- 
syncrasy of each of these writers, that if you will read 
a passage from any one, without naming the author, 



1^'SPIRAT10X. 



105 



I think I should be able to tell you at once, that it is 
from the works of Eobert Hall, or of Dr. Chalmers, 
or of Addison, or of Johnson. In the veiy same 
manner you find throughout the Bible a distinctive 
and remarkable difference of style. Matthew writes 
evidently to the Jews, and all his gospel is marked 
by a sort of Jewish tinge ; J ohn writes to the heaii: 
of humanity, and every word breathes love, and you 
seem to feel the throbbings of his heart through every 
sentence he utters, and in every verse he records. 
Luke was the classic scholar ; Paul, the inspired and 
magnificent logician ; Peter, the venerable old man, 
giving you the richest experience from the depths of 
his sanctified heart — a heart that had passed through 
storms, and troubles, and trials, and fears, and aches, 
and sorrows, more than fell to the lot of the rest of 
the apostles. Each apostle has his own distinctive 
and peculiar style ; so distinctive and so peculiar, 
that it is impossible to mistake it ; and yet each of 
these was inspired. The Bible is not a petrifaction, 
though it is inspired by one Being ; the writers 
themselves were not automata, moved like mechanism 
by a force ah extra of God : but independent indivi- 
duals, each with his distinctive temperament and 
character, seized and inspired by the Holy Spirit of 
God. Hence we have in the Bible what we have in 
no other book— -a variety, a richness, and a fulness, 
so that, literally and truly, every man gets the living 



106 



INSPIRATION. 



bread in the form and structure of basket that lie 
prefers. There may be two preachers of the Gospel, 
both equally gifted and pious, equally learned and 
eloquent ; you listen to one, and some way you are 
neither interested, nor arrested, nor profited; you 
listen to the other, and your interest is awakened, 
your profit is promoted, and you feel that you can 
hear that man's preaching, and get good from it. 
This is fact. God has made provision for that pecu- 
liar fact, or peculiar condition of things, in his 
own word. One loves to read the affectionate utter- 
ances of John; another loves to read the hard 
aphorisms of James ; another delights to read the 
venerable experience of Peter ; another is more 
pleased with the warm and glowing reasoning of St. 
Paul ; and each person finds in some part of the New 
Testament the same living truth conveyed in that 
peculiar form which best suits his taste and conduces 
most to his personal edification. 

It has been asked, and very much discussed, 
whether the sacred penmen in the New Testament 
were inspired in thought, but left to select them- 
selves the best words they could find for the embodi- 
ment of that thought ; or whether they had what has 
been called plenary inspiration ; that is, had not only 
thoughts given them, which they must have had, but 
had also suggested the best words in which to convey 
those thoughts. My belief is, that they not only had 



INSPIRATION". 



107 



inspired thoughts, but that all ages, all circumstances, 
all conditions of things considered, they were 
divinely led to use the very best words, in which to 
convey those high and heavenly thoughts. This 
seems to me absolutely necessary. Take John, 
illiterate ; Matthew, a publican ; Peter, a fisherman, 
accustomed to mend his nets. Let there be inspired 
into these men's minds the sublimest thoughts ; how 
could you expect that such illiterate men could find 
just words in which to embody those thoughts? 
Many a ploughman who guides his plough upon the 
mountuin-side, has thoughts that leap from the 
depths of his soul, so magnificent that if he had the 
words of a Shakespeare they would smite the world 
with admiration. The noblest thoughts have never 
yet been expressed; peasants have ideas great as 
ever poets had ; but the poet has the power of giving 
.to airy nothing the local habitation and the name ; 
in other words, the power of speech or expressioir, 
which the peasant has not. Besides, if Peter, the 
fisherman, had inspired into his mind divine 
thoughts, but had been left to express them as he 
best could, I should feel, on reading Peter's epistles, 
^not sure whether he has not overstated this and 
linderstated that. Convince me that Peter's expres- 
^ision was not inspired as well as Peter's thoughts, 
and my confidence in Peter's epistles as a full and 
-perfect exponent of Divine truth is very much 



108 



IXSPIRATIOX. 



sliattered and shaken . Sometimes von have listened to 
a speaker at a missionary meeting ; you have thought 
— I daresay many of you may have said— Well, if 
I were in his place, I think I could express myself 
much better than he does. But if you make the 
experiment you will find you are mistaken. We all 
have thoughts mightier and better than we can 
express; but it requires genius to give the just 
expression to a thought, as much as to conceive that 
thought in the depths of the soul itself. Inspired 
thoughts make a Christian; inspired thoughts em- 
bodied in inspired words make an evangelist, or an^ 
apostle, or a writer of the Xew Testament. 

But, it has been asked, was inspiration needed for 
some of the veiy trifiing incidents which are recorded 
in some of the epistles? I answer yes. Let me 
mention two or three of these, in order to show that 
in these little or minute incidents there is inspiration, 
just as there is in the most important and vital his- 
torical statements contained in the word of God. 
Let me take a well-known instance. Paul writes to 
Timothy, in 2 Timothy iv. 13 : The cloak that I 
" left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring 
" with thee, and the books, but especially the parcli- 

ments." Well, some one would naturally ask, did 
it need the Spirit of God to inspire that ? I answer, 
that very short verse, that very simple request, is 
pregnant with suggestive and important relative 



TXSPIRATION. 



meaning. When Paul said so, we know as a fact 
lie was at Eome ; w^e know also as fact — and mind 
yon, this very request is one of the indirect proofs of 
the authenticity of the sacred narrative in the Acts 
of the Apostles — w^e know that at this time he was a 
prisoner in that cold, damp dnngeon, still existing in 
Eome, called the Mamertine Prison ; we know, too, 
that, about the time that he wrote this, he was an 
aged man, approaching seventy years of age ; 
also at the time he wrote it winter was coming 
on. Here was an old man, whose blood was not 
rushing through his veins with the same speed with 
which it is wont to hurry in the days of youth — 
an old veteran, who had been in perils by land, in 
perils by sea, who had been scourged, who had been 
a day and a night in the deep — lying in a damp, cold 
dungeon ; the winter was coming on, and he was un- 
able to endure the cold with such clothing as he had ; 
how natural, and how demonstrative of the authen- 
ticity of the sacred narrative, is that simple request, 
Bring me my cloak which I left at Troas !" In- 
stead, therefore, of its not needing inspiration, I would 
not for the world lose such a text as that ; because it 
brings up, by, as it were, a lightning flash, all the 
incidents of the apostle's history ; his age, his trials, 
his sufferings, his condition, the place, the time, the 
approach of winter, and the necessity of having 
warmer clothing to shield him from its inclemency 



110 



INSPIRATIOJf. 



and its cold. The text seems to me worthy of inspira- 
tion ; and when we come to examine it closely, we 
see how nsefnl it is as a support of the narrative that 
tells us the story of the apostle's trials and sufferings. 

Let me take another instance, familiar to you 
all. The apostle writes to Timothy, and says to 
him, Drink no longer water, but use a little 
" wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often in- 
firmities." Some men would say, any physician 
would prescribe that ; it needed surely no inspiration 
thus to prescribe. Looked at in that light, certainly 
you would say so ; but let us see what it suggests : 
let us see if this apparently dull, dry, common-place 
text may not have latent in it some very important 
lessons. First, it proves that Timothy had hereto- 
fore been what I suppose some of our friends would 
call a teetotaller or total abstainer ; that is to say, he 
had been in the habit of drinking water, and not 
drinking wine ; and, certainly, if water agrees with 
one, it is much better, surely it is much more 
economical ; and, therefore, to say to a person who 
is quite well by drinking water, you ought to drink 
wine, would be very bad advice. It shows then 
that Timothy had been in the habit of drinking 
only water. But, in the second place, it shows that 
the water system had not agi^eed with Timothy, 
and that he had fallen into feebleness and sick- 
ness; and, in the third place, it shows that God 



IKSPIRATIOX. 



Ill 



takes care of tlie healtli of his ministering servants, 
just as he takes care of the salvation of their souls. 
It proves, in the next place, that the Apostle Paul did 
not believe it was sinful to drink wine, nor that there 
was something poisonous in wine ; in short he did 
not subscribe to what is called the ascetic principle, 
touch not, taste not, handle not, on any account or on 
any terms whatever. And, lastly, it suggests the 
interesting fact that Paul felt kindly for his dear 
brother, or rather his son in the ministry, Timothy. 
And if Paul was a bishop, as they say in the Church 
of England, and Timothy was a curate, then certainly 
this ancient bishop took great care of, and showed 
great practical kindness to, his poor curate ; for he 
exhorted him, and no doubt his generosity, if it was 
in his power, was in harmony with his exhortations, 
not any longer to starve himself to death by refusing 
what would do him good, but to use a little wine for 
his health's sake, and his often infirmities. Such a 
text, you see, has a great deal of precious truth latent 
in it, and proves to us that it is worthy of being 
inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. One more in- 
stance I will take, because it illustrates another 
aspect of this idea. In the closing chapter of the 
Epistle to the Eomans, we have recorded altogether 
eighteen persons, who are referred to under different 
features as fellow-labourers with Paul : " I commend 
imto you Phebe our sister. Greet Priscilla and 



112 



IXSPIRATIOX, 



" Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus. Salute my 
" well-heloved Epgenetus, who is the firstfruits of 

Achaia unto Christ. Greet Mary, who bestowed 
" much labour on us. Salute Andronicus and Junia, 
" my kinsmen and my fellow-prisoners, who are of 
" note among the apostles, who also were in Christ 
" before me. Greet Amplias, my beloved in the 
" Lord. Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and 

Staehys, my beloved. Salute Apelles, approved in 

Christ. Salute them which are of Aiistobulus's 
" household. Salute Herodion, my kinsman. Greet 
" them that be of the household of Xarcissus, which 

are in the Lord. Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, 
" who labour in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, 
*' which laboured much in the Lord. Salute Eufus, 

chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. 
" Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, 
" Hermes, and the brethren which are with them. 
" Salute Philologus, and Julia, 2sereus, and liis 
" sister, and Olympas." Altogether eighteen persons 
are spoken of in this last chapter to the Eomans, as 
having materially aided in laying the foundations of 
the Church of Christ that was then at Eome. Some 
will ask, what is there in this dull catalogue of 
persons, to whom the apostle sends his compli- 
ments, that required the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit of God? Notice the following important 
thoughts. First, the loving spirit exhibited by Paul 



IXSPIRATION. 



113 



towards all wlio liad taken any part in tTie extension 
of the Gospel of Christ ; the courtesy that runs 
through it; and outer conrtesy, when inspired by 
Christian love, is the most beautiful thing that one 
can possibly experience. Xotice, in the second 
place, the important place assigned to woman here ; 
out of eighteen persons that helped to lay the foun- 
dation of a Christian church at Eome, ten were 
women. Does not that suggest that woman has a 
mission in promoting the Gospel still ? One has one 
element ; another has another ; a third has means 
which the first two have not ; a fourth has time that 
the three I have referred to want; but every one 
in some way, and according to ability, may promote 
the Gospel of Christ, and be numbered in the beau- 
tiful sisterhood of the 16th chapter of the Epistle to 
the Eomans. Let us notice another very important 
lesson from this dry catalogue : namely, that if Peter 
was at this time what our Ecman Catholic friends 
say he was, the Pope of Eome, or even, if you 
like, the Bishop of Eome ; it is strange that the 
apostle, sending his compliments to people at Eome, 
who were conspicuous for their services in laying 
the foundations of that Church, should not send his 
kind compliments or his remembrances to his eccle- 
siastical superior, the bishop or chief pontiff of the 
Church of Eome. If Peter had been Bishop of Eome 
when this Epistle to the Eomans was wi itten, it is 

I 



114 



IXSPIRATIOX/ 



impossible that tlie Apostle Paul sliould liave omitted 
Ms name, or have been so disloyal, or, to use the 
language of that Church, so xmcanonical in his obedi- 
ence, as not to send his respects and compliments to 
his ecclesiastical superior, Peter. But Peter is not 
named ; and the presumption from this passage is 
sustained by the facts of histoiy, that Peter never was 
at Eome at all, in fact never savr Eome : and the huge 
marble statue, the great toe of which the priests and 
the bishops of that Chui'ch kiss as they enter St. 
Peter's, it is well known was not a statue carved to 
represent St. Peter, but an ancient statue of Jupiter 
Tonans; the thunderbolts being taken out of his 
hand, and the keys put instead; and thus Jupiter 
was baptized and consecrated to be the image of 
Peter. The evidence is irresistible from this passage 
alone, that Peter never was at Eome ; that he was 
certainly not then the Bishop of Eome ; and thus 
what seems a dry catalogue is really fraught with 
most instructive historical and theological meaning. 
But it does seem to me only in keeping, now, with 
all creation and with all providence that is about us, 
that God should insj^ire such things as these even in 
the Xew Testament. God takes care of angels ; but 
He takes care of infants ; God superintends the 
cherubim about His throne, but He takes care of a 
sparrow, so that one cannot fall without his peimis- 
fcion. It is God's breath that gives to the rose its 



INSPIRATION. 115 

perfume ; it is God's loving smiles that give to that 
rose all its exquisite tints. And if you will take a 
microscope, and look at the smallest living organism 
jou will see as exquisite mechanism in the insect 
of an hour, or in the organism revealed in a 
water-drop, as there is in the human, body, or in 
the structure of an angel that is beside the throne. 
In the outer world tiny and minute things are at- 
tended to by God. So it may be in the inspired and 
inner world ; little incidents, that seem to us insig- 
nificant, may nevertheless be fraught with deep and 
precious meaning. So much for the objection some- 
times made to inspiration from the non-necessity of it 
in these little things. 

It appears to me that Christ is God manifest in the 
flesh ; the Bible is God's truth audible and manifest 
in human speech. But you say, perhaps, and very 
justly and naturally, it is not the English Bible that 
is inspired. I admit it ; it is the Hebrew Bible, the 
Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Tes- 
tament. But the English translation — and it has 
faults — with all its faults is the most perfect re- 
flection of the original that any nation ever had, or 
that ever appeared in any language upon earth. e 
maintain that the original is the inspired ; and the 
translation is so precisely in. proportion as it ap- 
proaches to the original. It is a most striking fact, 
well worth notice, that if all the mistranslations in 



116 



IXSPIHATIOX. 



oTir Bible were corrected, the correction would on! 7 
tell more distinctly and emphatically in favour of 
evangelical and Protestant truth ; and many of those 
tests which puzzle and perplex, when really looked 
at in the origiial cease to puzzle or perplex. For 
instance, six times an expression occurs in the 
Epistles, to one of which I refer in Titus ; the words 
are, " Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious 
" appearing of the great God and om- Saviour Jesus 
/ Christ." The reader would naturally say this is the 
appearing of God the Father and the appearing of 
God the Son ; but Bishoj:^ Middleton has shown, in 
his criticism on the use of the Greek article, that the 
true translation, and it is unquestionably the true 
one, is, " Looking for that blessed hope, the glorious 
appearing of Jesus Christ, our gi^eat God and 
Saviour:'" and six times that form of expression 
occurs ; and if altered, as it should be altered, to 
suit the original, it would be not a more emphatic, 
but a more formal statement of that great ti'uth which 
is the pillar of Christianity, the essential deity of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It has been 
said, however, by some, and especially by some of 
the learned men who appear in what are called the 
Essays and Eeviews, that there are so man}' various 
readings in the original Greek of the Kew Testament^ 
that it is most ]3uzzling to ascertain which is the tme 
one. I admit at once that we have not a single3IS. 



IXSPinATIOX. 



117 



written by the liand of an apostle ; wliy or wherefore 
it is so permitted, I cannot say ; we have not a single 
book of the Xew Testament written by the hand of 
an apostle ; but we have MSS. in the 3rd century, 
and in the 4thj and so many others, that there 
is an absolute guarantee that ]io interpolation can 
possibly have taken place. For instance, in the 
2nd century the Peschito translation was executed : 
that translation has been found ; we know now what 
was the Xew Testament in the 2nd century, as it 
was translated by contemporaneous persons. There 
was executed in the beginning of the 3rd century 
the Italic, or the Latin translation, from the Greek ; 
and we find MSS. then multiplied. Eut suppose 
that all the books of the Xew Testament were abso- 
lutely lost, I would engage to take out of the Greek 
and Latin Fathers nearly every text in the Xew 
Testament, from the beginning to the close of that 
book. They discussed, controverted, and quarrelled, 
but in the course of their quarrels and disputes the}' 
were compelled to quote texts of the Xew Testament ; 
and these texts remain in the writings of the Fathers 
to this day. And when we bring all these MSS. of 
early ages together, the translations that were exe- 
cuted, the quotations that were made, the disputes 
about the meaning of a text, rareh' about the words 
of the text, we have demonstrable and irrefragable 
proof, that we have the Xew Testament now in all 



113 IXSPIRATIOX. 

the perfection of its first writing, in all the splendour 
of its first kindling. As to the various readings, 
hear the opinion of two or three men, the best and 
noblest critical scholars that ever turned their at- 
tention to the subject. Michaslis spent thirty years 
in critical researches. Dr. Kennicott spent ten 
y^ars, and compared together 581 MSS. of the New 
Testament. Professor Eossi examined 680 MSS., 
Griesbach examined 335 MSS. for the Gospels, 
Scholz 67-1 ; and after these, Lachmann, and Tis- 
chendorf, and others, turned their attention to the 
same subject in the same way and with the same 
care. Well now, what is the result of all their in- 
vestigations ? Michaelis says, "The foes of Chris- 
" tianity expected a rich harvest, they expected 
" discoveries which have not been made." We say of 
the whole of their investigations, that the differences 
are so trifling that they do not even reward the 
labour bestowed in searching them out. The little- 
ness of the differences is their gi^eatest eloquence. 
A^'hen, therefore, you take up a critical Greek 
Testament, or the Dean of Canterbury's Greek Tes- 
tament, and see what he calls the various readings, 
you will find the various readings are about jots, 
and tittles, and trifles ; and they only prove the 
extreme anxiety of scholars that we should have in 
all its perfection this precious book ; and the result 
is, that all the differences of readings do not touch a 



INSPIRATION, 




single vital doctrine, invalidate a single moral 
precept, or alter in any appreciable degree the 
essential truth, of the gospe] of Christ. Then be 
satisfied that you have in this book, in the Hebrew 
and Greek original, the exact reflection of the mind 
of God; the all Scripture given by inspiration of 

God;" and believe me, you have in our mag- 
nificent English version, notwithstanding its in- 
cidental defects, a most faithful expression of the 
mind of God, as that mind is embodied in the origi- 
nal. Be thankful for that noble English version : 
like all things, even it is capable of improvement; 
and if all would agree to lay aside their crotchets, 
perhaps it could be improved. 

We thank God that all Scripture is inspired ; that 
we have in this blessed book a light to our feet and 
a lamp to our path ; and that we may search the 
Scriptures ; and the longer that we read them, and 
the more thoroughly we become acquainted with 
them, the more we shall recognize in these words the 
words of God, and the mofe we shall praise Hint 
who has given us this record for our guidance, com- 



Iqrt^.and peace. 



.u^^^ii^q sfi lis 



120 



AYHAT IS THE ATONEMENT ? 

The atonement, whicli is the great central doctrine 
of the Christian religion, is explained away by these 
writers in such statements as the following : — 

T\ hy may not justification by faith have meant 
" the peace of mind, or sense of Divine approval, 
which comes of trust in a righteous God, rather 
" than a fiction of merit by transfer?" — Essays and 
Reviews^ p. 80. 

Salvation from evil through sharing the Saviour's 
" spirit, v/as shifted into a notion of purchase from 
" God through ihe price of his bodily pangs." — 
Essays and Reviews, p. 87. 

Whatever be the meaning of these words it is very 
obvious they teach a very different doctrine from 
that of Christendom. 

The Atonement is practically denied by our 
modern Essayists. They say the language of the 
Scripture does not bear out the Protestant belief. 
Let us see. I will make no attempt here to discuss 
it in what they call a philosophical spirit, or by an 
appeal to " the inner light," or " objectively," or 

subjectively." God has spoken. It is useless for 



AVHAT IS THE ATOXEMEXT ? 



121 



man to dream. Any honest mind will be able to 
appreciate the force of the language used in Scripture 
to describe Christ's death ; language that is applied 
to all the ancient sacrifices of the Jews : — acquainted 
with this, we must come to either of two conclusions. 
That the apostles did not mean to teach that Christ's 
death was atoning; if they did not mean to teach 
that, they have yet so completely and clearly taught 
it, that they cannot have understood the language 
they employed ; and instead of being inspired, they 
must be fallible, and mistaken, and misguided men. 
There is no alternpttive : either the apostles distinctly 
meant to teach that Christ's work was vicarious, 
piacnlar, expiatory and atoning, and they have done 
it triumphantly, — or they did not mean to teach it ; 
and yet if they did not, they have fallen into the 
most direct way it is possible to imagine of teaching 
and inculcating that idea. The Essayist to whom I 
have referred says that justification by faith, by the 
propitiation of Christ, is merely peace of conscience 
enjoj'ed by doing what is right ; he cannot under- 
stand it to mean anything vicarious. And a clergy- 
man in the west end .of London, Mr. Davies, has 
elaborately taught, and published what he has 
taught (and been well and triumphantly replied to. 
I rejoice to say, by other clergymen more enlightened 
than himself), that the idea of the atonement, or 
Christ bearing the punishment of our sins, will not 



122 



WHAT IS THE ATOXEMEXT ? 



endure the test of modem criticism, and tliat it must 
be dismissed. Xow were this an obsolete opinion, it 
would not be necessary to allude to its advocates; 
but it is growing among a class, and it very much 
gains acceptance from the fact, that the men that 
hold it do not search the Scriptures. They search 
the records of philosophy so called, they look at what 
they read in the Bible in the light of their ovm 
reason and understanding : and they say, certain 
doctrines will not bear these inner tests; and as 
they will not bear these inner tests, they say, your 
showing that they bear such interpretation in the 
Bible is worth nothing, the Bible must be interpreted 
by the inner reason, by the light of philosophy ; it 
must not be understood as the great mass of Christians 
understand it. 

AVe maintain, on the contrary, that reason has 
erred, errs, and will err, unless they can make a 
Pope of it and pronounce it infallible; that con- 
science errs ; and instead of being the mighty power 
it once was, and its oracles decisive, it is but a 
citizen king amidst the tempestuous passions, that 
put it up and set it down at their own discretion. 
And philosophy is unripe : the philosopher of to-day 
contradicting the philosopher of yesterday; and the 
philosopher of to-morrow will contradict the phi- 
losopher of all past ages. But this holy book 
remains a perfect book; it was written for the 



WHAT IS THE ATOXEMEXT ? 



123 



common people ; it is acldres??ed not to philosophers 
not to savaiis, not to scientific men, not to kings, 
not to nobles ; but to peasants, and mechanics, and 
mothers, and sisters, and husbands, and wives, and 
brothers, and working men ; and of all books it is the 
most intelligible ; and upon the great vital doctrines 
of Christianity it speaks with a clearness that cannot 
be mistaken, with an emphasis so decisive that he 
that reads may run while he reads it. 

Let us here introduce, not a discussion, but clear 
and simple texts ; and if Christians can store them in 
their memories and ponder them in their hearts, they 
will never let go what is the sheet anchor of Chris- 
tianity, the atonement of Christ. Give up that 
previous truth, and you give up the very foundations 
of the Christian faith ; you lift the anchors of our 
hope, and we are adrift upon a tempestuous ocean, 
without helm, without compass, and vithout help. 
Christ is said in the Xew Testament, and in the Old 
also, to die for us. The words that prove it are, 
'John X. 15, "I lay down my life for the sheep." 
Eomans viii. 32, " God spared not his own Son, but 
" delivered him up for us alL" Eomans xiv. 15, "For 
'' whom Christ died." 2 Corinthians v. 14, " One 

died for all ; then were all dead." 1 Cor. xv. 3, " I 
" delivered unto you first of all that which I also 

received, how that Christ died for our sins accord- 
" ing to the Scriptures." 



124: 



-VrnXT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



Wliat do we unclerstand by the plirase, to die for 
lis ? What is the meaning of it ? It is so frequently 
repeated that it must have some meaning. "What 
meaning shall we attach to it ? Can there be a 
better or a more fair way than that of appealing to 
the langaiage of the same book which teaches this, 
and ascertain in what sense it uses the phrase, di/ing 
for us ? Let us quote passages. David said respect- 
ing Absalom as follows (2 Sam. xviii. 33) : Would 
" God I had died for thee, Absalom, my son, my 

son." Xow Vv^hat is meant by that? what did 
David mean by that ? Surely he meant, would that 
I had died, that thou, Absalom, mightest have con- 
tinued to live. Take another phrase : in Ezekiel we 
read that the father shall not die for the children ; 

but every man shall die for his own sins." What 
do you understand by that ? That the parents shall 
not suffer the punishment of death on account of 
their children's sin ; but that every man shall die or 
suffer the punishment due to his own sin. Take 
the language of Caiaphas (John xi. 50) : It is 

expedient that one man die for the people, that the 

nation perish not." What is meant by that? That 
one man should be the victim, and that because of 
his death the nation should escape the penalty of 
destruction. Again, the phrase in Eomans y^-^^-^ 
" Scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet 
" peradventure for a good man some would even 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



125 



dare to die.'' AYliat is meant here ? Tliat to 
deliver a rigiiteons man it is possible that some one 
will die ; hut to deliver a good man some peradven- 
tiire will be found to die, that is, to bear his punish- 
ment, that he may escape. Here is a perfect expla- 
nation. Christ is said to die for ns : every phrase 
in which these words are used implies the old, call 
it, if you like, Calvinistic doctrine, the okl Pro- 
testant doctrine that Christ died, not an example of 
patience, not a specimen of martyrdom, but a sul- 
st it lite, an atonement, bearing the punishment that we 
deserved, and carrying off from us the effects which 
our sins conduct down upon us from the judgment- 
seat of God. 

Let us turn now to another class of phrases, and 
see the force of them. Jesus is said to die — an ex- 
pression somewhat similar, but yet different — " for 
" our sins." Isaiah liii. 5, He was wounded for 

our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniqui- 
" ties." Again, 1 Corinthians xv. 3, Christ died 
" for our sins." Again, 1 Peter iii. 18, " Christ hath 
" once suffered for sins." Again, Galatians i. 4, 
" He gave himself for our sins." Xow what does 
it mean? Let us see what its meaning is, by turn- 
ing to the use of this phrase, first in the prophet 
Ezekiel xviii. 17 : " The son shall not die for the 
" iniquity of his father." '\That does that mean? 
That the punishment incurred by the father as a 



126 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



retribution on his personal sin shall not be visited 
on the son, as if the son had been guilty. Again, 
Micah vi. 7, Shall I give my first-born for mj 
" transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of 
" my soul ?" What does that mean ? The first- 
born, shall he be sacrificed in order to avert the 
consequences of the sin which I have committed? 
Therefore, when it is said, Christ died for our sins, 
it must mean, if there be any harmony in Scripture, 
or if one text casts the least illustration upon another, 
that he died bearing the penalty that our sins had 
provoked ; so that he having borne the punishment, 
we that believe are emancipated from the fear and 
possibility of its being visited upon us. 

Let us turn to a third class of texts. It is said 
of Christ, in Isaiah liii. 10, " Thou shalt make his 
" soul an offering for sin." Again, Hebrews ix. 28, 
" Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." 
Hebrews x. 12, " This man, after he had offered 
" one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the 
" right hand of God." What is meant by these 
phrases? I turn to Leviticus v. 15, ''If a soul 
" commit a trespass, he shall bring for his trespass 
" a ram without blemish ; and the priest shall make 
'' an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass- 
" offering, and it shall be forgiven him.'' Christ is 
said to die a sin-offering. In Leviticus it is ex- 
plained, that the ram offered as a trespass-offering 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



127 



shall be the cause of the sin committed by the 
responsible offerer being forgiven. Again, we read 
in 1 Corinthians v. 7, " Christ our Passover is 
"sacrificed for us;" Hebrews ix. 22, "Without 
" shedding of blood there is no remission that is, 
no removal of punishment. So Christ our Passover 
was offered or sacrificed for us. AYhat is meant by 
this? That the lamb slain in the home of Israel, 
its blood sprinkled on the doorposts of the houses, 
was the cause, the immediate reason, w^hy the de- 
stroying angel, not, as Dr. Williams calls it, a raid 
of marauding Bedouins, but the destroying angel 
did not enter into that home and smite the first- 
born of the children of Israel as he smote the first- 
born of Egypt, from Pharaoh's palace down to the 
meanest hut in his realm. The idea, therefore, con- 
veyed is, something offered in the room of one that 
has sinned, so that the thing offered shall in God's 
sight conduct away from the offerer the punishment 
which the offerer has deserved. 

Again, Christ's death is said to be an atonement ; 
as some propose to pronounce it, an at-one-ment ; 
but atonement is perhaps the more correct idea. 
In Eomans v. 11, " By Christ we have received the 
" atonement." In Daniel ix. 2-1, we' read, " Seventy 
" weeks are determined upon thy people and upon 
" thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to 
" make" an end of sins, and to make reconciliation," 



128 



WHAT IS THE ATOXEMEXT ? 



cv in the Hebrew, " atonement for iniquity." Tlie 
Hebrew word [Capliar] occurs 154 times in tbe 
Old Testament Scriptures; 13 times it means ''to 
" cover," as when Xoali covered the ark with pitch : 
12 times it means " to forgive ;" and 129 times, 
that is, the vast majority of times, it means " to 

make an atonement for sin." So Christ is said 
to be the atonement. 1 John ii. 2, He is the 

atonement for our sins." And again. 1 John iv. 10. 

God sent his son to be an atonement for our sins." 
Eomans iii. 25, "Whom God has set forth to be a 
" propitiation," or an atonement. Sometimes it is 
l\a(77i]pLov sometimes it is (\n(7^o£ sometimes it is the 
verb. iXacTKeadai ; but in every instance the word may 
justly be translated to atone," and " atonement," 
Christ is said to be our atonement, to have made an 
atonement ; what is the meaning of that? I gather 
the meaning of it from parallel passages in the word 
of God. Leviticns xvii. 11, " The life of the flesh 

is in the blood ; and I have given it to you upon 

the altar to make an atonement for your souls, for 
''it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the 
" soul." But what was that atonement? It was 
the destruction of the life of a living being, and the 
escape from ^'^'^'^'^^i-^^^^'t of a responsible and a 
moral agent. The idea of atonement, therefore, as 
taught in the Levitical law ; the idea of atonement 
that every Jew was indoctrinated vrith from his very 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



129 



infancy, was, tliat a living creature, a lamb, an ox, 
was to have its blood, which is the life, shed, and 
the shedding of its blood should be to hiui that 
offered it a shelter from the judgments which his 
sins . had most justly provoked. And that this is 
the meaning comes out more clearly from the ex- 
ception ; in one case no atonement was allowed ; 
there shall be no atonement in Israel for the life of 
a murderer. But what are we to understand by 
that ? That the crime of murder was so fearful in 
the estimate of God that no atonement was allowed 
for it. AYhat does this imply ? That no murderer 
should escape the penalty of death; that was the 
law of Israel. The very exceptional case, therefore, 
shows that atonement, in the usage of the sacred 
penmen, means one creature living, but not re- 
sponsible, killed, sacrificed, consumed to ashes on 
behalf of a responsible offerer; and that responsible 
offerer, through God's provision, escaping the penal- 
ties which his sins had justly provoked. 

Let us turn to another series. Christ's death is 
frequently said in Scripture to reconcile us to God ; 
the phrase implying, of course, previous alienation. 
The texts that show it are these. Eomans v. 10, 
" If when we were enemies we were reconciled to 
" God by the death of his Son, much more, being 
** reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Again, 
in Ephesians ii. 16, " And that Christ might recon- 

K 



130 



WHAT IS THE AT0XE:\IENT? 



" cile both, unto God in one body by the cross, having 
" slain the enmity thereby." Again, 2 Cor. y. 18, 

God hath reconciled nsto himself by Jesus Christ." 
Again, 2 Cor. v» 19, " God was in Christ, reconciling 
^' the world to himself, not imputing their ti^espasses 

unto them." Xow what is the usage of that 
phi^ase ? How was it understood by them who 
were in the habit of ceaselessly offering sacrifices 
and victims? In Leviticus vi. 30, we read, " The 
" blood of the sin-offering, brought into the taber- 

nacle of the congregation to reconcile withal in 

the holy place ;" that is, that the sins of the offerer 
might be forgiven, and God not punish him, because 
of that sacrifice. \\e read again, ^' wherewithal 

shall David reconcile himself unto his Maker 
The offended party was God ; David did not need 
so much the change in him, for he was seeking to 
be reconciled to God, but that God might accept 
him. Again, in Matthew v. 23, " If thou bring thy 

gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy 

brother hath aught against thee, first be reconciled 
" to thy brother." 

AYhat is meant by that? If your brother ^has just 
cause for being angry with you ; jovl, the offender, - 
are to go to your brother, and be reconciled to him. 
But how reconciled ? It is you that have offended ; 
it is he that is angry ; on him the change must be 
wi'ought ; and the idea therefore is, j)ersuade youi' 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



131 



brother to be reconciled to you ; show that you 
acknowledge your sin, that you seek to be forgiven, 
and are anxious that he should be reconciled to you. 
And hence, if you have a quarrel with a brother, if 
you yourself are the offending party, it is your duty 
to go to him and tell him you are sorry that you 
have offended him, and be reconciled to him ; that 
is, show him by all the reasons in your power that 
it is just to lay aside his anger now that you have 
acknowledged your fault, and to let harmony or at- 
one-ment exist where there was enmity or estrange- 
ment before. 

In other passages, Christ is said to bear our 
sins. 1 Peter ii. 24, Who his own self bare our 

sins." Again, Hebrews ix. 28, " Christ was 
" once offered to bear the sins of many." Again, 
John i. 29, " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh 

away," — the Greek is, aipet, " that carrieth away, 
*' that beareth away, — the sins of the world." But, 
what is meant by that phrase, bearing sins, bearing 
away sins? In Lamentations v. 7, we read, " Our 
" fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have 

borne their iniquities." "What is meant by that? 
The children say, our fathers have sinned ; and we, 
their descendants, are bearing the consequences of 
their sins. Well, Chiist is said to bear the sins of 
believers ; that is, he has borne the consequences of 
our sins, or the judgments which they provoked. 



132 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



This word hear is also applied to the party offended. 
For instance, in Exodus xxxii. 32, " Yet now, if 
*' tlion wilt forgive literally it is translated from 
the Hebrew, " If thou wilt bear away their sin 
that" is, if thou wilt take the burden of their sins 
off them, that their punishment may not oYertake 
them, and bear those sins away into a land of forget- 
fulness. Again, in Exodus xxviii. 43, we read, 
" That they bear not iniquity and die that is, that 
they be not punished with death as the consequence 
of their iniquity. Then again, in Ezekiel xviii. 20, 
" The soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall 
" not bear the iniquity of the father." In what 
sense could the son bear the iniquity of the father ? 
By enduring the punishment which the father's sin 
had brought down. Jesus Christ now is said to 
bear the sins of his people, — in what sense ? To 
endure and exhaust the penalties which our sins had 
brought down from a broken law and from the 
offended justice of God. So that if Christ has borno 
my sins, there is no condemnation to me now in time 
or in eternity. We appeal to all, is it possible that 
any other idea can be put upon the death of Christ 
than that of expiation, substitution, sacrifice, atone- 
ment ; if the passages describing his death occurring 
in the apostolic writings are to be interpreted by 
the ritual and the phraseology of that Jewish economy 
to which the apostles themselves originally belonged ? 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



133 



If the apostles, we allege, designed to convey tliat 
Christ died onr substitute, our atonement, our sacri- 
fice, they could not have used language more ex- 
pressive and precise ; they could not have employed 
terms more universally understood to denote so ; 
and if they did not mean that, then they were in- 
competent to write what they have written ; and the 
Bible is an unreliable and an untrustworthy book. 

But the Unitarian and the Eationalist allege that 
Christ died not for this purpose ; they say he died 
first of all, to prove his perfect sincerity in the doc- 
trines which he taught. That is what they say ; 
they say he died simply to prove that he w^as per- 
fectly sincere in the doctrines which he taught. 
Now, in the first place, these men must get rid 
of the arguments already adduced ; they must show 
that the phrases descriptive of Christ's death do 
not mean what those phrases in every portion of 
the Old Testament necessarily imply. But we ask 
them, where in the whole compass of revelation is 
Christ said to have died to attest his sincerity ? We 
show in a thousand instances that he died for sin ; 
we defy them to show in one that Christ died to 
attest the sincerity of his convictions. And in the 
second place, Moses, Abraham, and John, did not 
die such a death ; yet who on earth doubts the sin- 
cerity of Moses or the truthfulness of John ; or that 
both were conscientiously persuaded that what they 



134 



WHAT IS THE ATOXEMEXT ? 



tauglit -were the very trntlis of heaTen ? Besides, 
it seems to me tliat to subject one's self to death, 
Trhich Christ did Yolimtarily, to prove that he was 
sincere, was an nnnecessaiy step. 

s The apostle Paul was jnst as sincere as it was 
possible for flesh and blood to be; yet he, instead 
of courting death, escaped to save himself alive ; yet 
nobody doubts that Paul was sincere, though he thus 
escaped to save his life. If the Lord Jesus Christ 
had lived thirty years longer, and died at sixty or 
at eighty, his sincerity would have been still more 
established and vindicated, for it is easier to die a 
martyr under the inspiration of an hour, than to 
live a beautiful example under the provocatives and 
the taunts of a whole lifetime. And lastly, if 
Christ died to prove his sincerity, why those mar- 
vellous phenomena at his death ? Why the shrouded 
sky ; why the opening graves ; why the rending 
rocks; why that melancholy wail that pierced all 
creation, "My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me ?" why the awful impression on the Roman 
soldier ; why the conviction carried home to the 
heai-t of the thief upon the cross ? This death was 
no martyr's death, it was the death of the Lamb of 
God, the Son of man, the atonement for our sins, 
the Saviour of all the guilty that believe. Take, 
now, the expressions descriptive of his death, as 
used by himself and the apostles ; take those words — 



WHAT IS THE ATOXE:\rEXT? 



135 



we do not lay full stress upon tliem — John xiv. 6, 
" I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man 
Cometh unto the Father, but by me." Who could 
use such language? Dare Paul, dare Jolm, dare 
any one of the apostles or evangelists say so ? 
Why was he the way ? Why can no man come unto 
the Father but by him ? Because he only made an 
atonement; of twain he made one; he bore the 
curse which our sins had provoked ; he fulfilled the 
law which we were unable to fulfil ; and he there- 
fore became the pathway connecting the depths of 
earth with the heights of heaven ; a pathway acces- 
sible to every soul that will; so broad that the 
greatest sinner may walk in it, and yet so holy that 
the least indulged sin cannot be tolerated in it ; and 
go sure that no man ever made the experiment and 
failed of climbing to the very gates of glory. Again, 
take another phrase, Acts iv. 12, ''Neither is there 
" salvation in any other, for there is none other name 
" under heaven given among men, whereby we must 
'' be saved." Mark the weight of these words ; there is 
an exclusiveness about them that indicates that he 
whose name was given was no common being. There 
is teaching in others, there is example in others ; but 
in no human being but one, in no being in the uni- 
verse but one, is there salvation ; it is exclusively 
his ; he is the author of it, the giver of it, the cause 
of it, the source of it, and takes all the glory of it. 



136 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMEXT ? 



Then turn to tlie apostle Paul's language ; either the 
apostle Paul was a fanatic, or Christ's death was 
something veiy different from what the Oxford 
Essayists say it was. ^'hat does St. Paul say ? 1 Cor. 

ii. 2, " I determined not to know anything among 
you save Jesus Christ," — and him the teacher? 

Xo. And him the example ? Xo. And him the 
sincere sufferer? Xo : but '* I determined not to 
know am-thing among you save Jesus Christ, and 
''him crucified." Yv'hy crucified? Because in that 
crucifixion and on that cross there was no common 
death : but the death of Him who is the Sacrifice for 
GUI' sins. 

We turn to another phrase: Eomans v. 8, " God 
'' commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we 
" were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Xow mark the 
parallel phrase in the veiy same passage : lluch 
"more then, being now justified by his blood, we 
" shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, 
" when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God 
" by the death of his Son. much more, being recon- 
" ciled, we shall be saved by his life where " died 
" for us," is made in the mind of the apostle and in 
his wiiting equivalent to justified, acquitted, par- 
doned by his blood. Again, we read in Galatians 

iii. 13, that Christ was '-made a cui'se for us." Vv'hat 
can be meant by this ? That our curse was laid on 
him, that its consequence might not lie upon us ; 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



137 



lie was made a curse for us, in order to take the curse 
off us, and to lay tlie blessing upon us ; it denotes 
substitution, vicarious, atoning death. But it is said 
bj some of these divines, that while he died to show 
his sincerity, he died also to be an example of forti- 
tude, and patience, and meekness, and resignation. 
If so, why die so early? If he had lived much 
longer, and wrestled with the world's contumely 
much more, he would have been still more strikingly 
an example of fortitude, of patience, and of meek- 
ness. Besides, wdiy is it that the apostle Paul does 
refer to him as the great example of patience, of 
fortitude, and of meekness, but speaks constantly of 
his death as the hope of Israel ? Was it the desire 

of all nations," was it the burden of a thousand pro- 
phecies, that one should come who should be an 
example of fortitude and patience before all man 
kind? Does the apostle say, "God so loved the 

w^orld that he gave his only begotten Son," that 
whosoever imitateth this example of patience, and 
fortitude, and meekness, may not perish, but have 
eternal life? Xo ; but that whosoever "believeth 

on him," puts his trust in him, not imitates his 
example, " may have everlasting life." 

John says, " Here is love ; not that we loved 
"God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son," 
to be an example of fortitude, of patience, and of 
meekness? Ko, but ''to be a propitiation for oui' 



138 WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 

sins." Here then is the irresistible evidence that 
whatever was exemplary in Christ's life, his death 
was not to be an example. I maintain that no 
thought exhausts the phraseology of Scripture, no 
solution can be found that meets the complicated 
difficulties of the case, except the Protestant evan- 
gelical solution, that our sins were laid upon him, 
and therefore their consequences will never strike 
us ; that his righteousness is imputed unto us, and 
therefore its purchase will be ours for ever ; that our 
sins on him were the secret of his agony and bloody 
sweat, and cross and passion ; that his righteousness 
on us will be the secret of our glory, our honour 
and our immoiiality. "When he died upon the 
accursed tree there was nothing in him that deserved 
death, but everything on him ; when you and I shall 
stand at the margin of the everlasting rest, there will 
be nothing in us worthy of heaven, but there will 
be on us what will raise us to its loftiest level, to its 
brightest crown, to its most glorious inheritance. 

Hold fast that precious truth corrupted by Eoman- 
ism on the one hand, denied and diluted by Eational- 
ism upon the other hand : that there is no atoning 
element anywhere but in the blood of Christ ; that 
there is no conclusive rule and directory of faith and 
life anywhere but within the boards of the Bible ; 
that there is no way to heaven in any one but in 
Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; the old 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



139 



story, tlie Bible witliont a clasp, the cross without a 
screen ; and the way to heaven and the price of it 
without money or price, or purchase on your part, 
received by faith, and the fruits of it enjoyed by 
grace, and honour and iiamortality yours for ever and 
for ever. Now, if you will recollect these passages 
of Scripture, it is inevitable that you will be satisfied 
that Christ's death cannot be explained except as an 
atonement; that the language of Scripture is such 
that it is impossible to escape this conclusion ; and 
how men who have signed the Thirty- nine Articles, 
than which nothing can be more Protestant, or men 
who profess to belong to a Protestant Church, can 
eat the bread that grows upon its glebes, and deny 
the doctrines they are paid and maintained to 
teach, rests with those that have authority in that 
Church to see to it. 

The atonement of Christ is no common topic, it 
is a subject of deep and lasting importance, it lies at 
the very foundation of Christianity. Convince the 
Eomanist, for instance, that his religion is a perse- 
cuting one, and you have not brought him one 
inch nearer to the Saviour. Show him his religion 
is a despotism ; this will not win him. AYe might 
thus exasperate, not enlighten. But the subject of 
the atonement is fitted by the blessing of the Holy 
Spirit to touch one's convictions, one's heart, one's 
soul, one's personal interest. 



140 



WHAT IS THE ATOXEMENT? 



The Unitarian repudiates tlie atonement, the 
Oxford Essayist explains it away. Both say Christ 
died a martyr, and lived a beautiful and spotless 
example. So far they speak truth ; hut half the 
truth is often almost a lie. The most beautifal 
eulogy on Christ is to be found in the writings of 
the French infidel Eousseau. They also say, Christ's 
death is merely martyrdom. But Christ, by the 
admission of Heaven, Earth, and Hell, was without 
a fault. If ever innocence walked the earth, it was 
that incarnation of it in Bethlehem, in Gethsemane, 
in the streets of Jerusalem. God's law is, that per- 
fect innocence should have endless immortality and 
perfect happiness. How is it then that the only 
innocent being that ever appeared in our world was 
the greatest sufferer ? It would be as great a rever- 
sion of God's law to punish or suffer to be punished 
the absolutely innocent, as to reward the personally 
wicked. These solutions cannot explain satisfactorily 
or consistently the death of Christ. It can only be 
explained by saying that he died, not a martyr, but 
a propitiatory and atoning sacrifice for the sins of all 
that believe. 

Others go to the opposite extreme. They say 
that Christ did die a sacrifice, but that sacrifice was 
so imperfect, that it needs to be eked out by the 
ceaseless sacrifices ceaselessly offered on the so-called 
altars of the Eoman Catholic Church ; or, to take the^ 
mildest view, that the sacrifice offered once for all 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



141 



Tvas inadequate, and that it mnst be offered Sunday 
after Sunday, holyday after liolyday, a propitiation 
for tlie bins of the living and the dead. The Eoman 
Catholics tell you, that the sacrifice he sees on the 
altar is the literal flesh and blood, the very and 
actual deity of the blessed Lord, brought down from 
heaven at the bidding of the priest, laid on the altar, 
and there offered up as an atonement as real as that 
on the cross of Calvary, for all the sins of the living 
and the dead. By the Eationalist doctrine the 
atonement is exhausted of all that is divine ; by the 
Eoman Catholic it is corrupted, by mixing with it 
that which is human and superstitious. The Pro- 
testant holds the truth as God revealed it, as saints 
have accepted it, and as all heaven at this moment 
rejoice to hear and celebrate it. 

\Yhat then explains the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment? Omnipotence cannot lie. God said, "The 
soul that sinneth, it shall die !" That is truth — irre- 
versible truth. But God so loved the sinner, that 
he said sinners shall not all die. These seeming 
contradictions are reconciled by the sacrifice of 
Christ. All that man has forfeited as a creature and 
cannot repay, Jesus has paid. By Christ's obedi- 
ence man can appeal to God for pardon in the name 
of Christ. He can appeal, not merely to God's love 
and mercy, but to his justice and faithfulness, to an 
honoured law, ordered covenant, and repeated 



142 



AVHAT IS THE atoxeme::^t ? 



promises. Some Christians tliink that God's love is 
the result of Christ's death, that God is a sort of 
awful, revengeful Being, and that Christ wards off 
God's wrath. But a more revolting notion of God's 
love it is not possible to cherish. Christ's death was 
not the cause of God's love, but the manifestation of 
that love, which in its height and depth passeth all 
understanding. 

All creatures are under law — the very essence of 
creatureship is subjection to law. The tides of the 
ocean, the paths of the stars, the falling of a leaf, 
the bursting of an earthquake, the growth of plants, 
the very colour of the grass, the tints on the petal 
of a flower — all are under law. A stone falls be- 
cause it is under a given law. We call it law, but 
it is really God's will. Kot only is every dumb 
creature under a law, but every law has attached to 
its infraction a penalty. If I put my hand into the 
fire, the penalty is that the hand shall be burnt. 
These laws are universal. AThenever the law is 
violated, not only is the punishment incurred, but 
other beings are injured by our violation of that 
law. For instance, were the bird to cease to live 
in the air, and live only on the land, it would inter- 
fere with what is provided for others. Were a planet 
to move off eccentrically from its orbit, it would not 
only incur the penalty of having violated its ovm 
law, but it would impinge on the orbits of others, 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



143 



and destroy them. We tlms see the necessity of 
law, not only as an embodiment of justice, but of 
benevolence too. 

So it is with man's moral nature. Here the law 
is, Perfect holiness is perfect happiness. The 
breach of this law has its penalty attached to it. 
People are apt to think that the breach of a physical 
law is more constantly visited by penalty than the 
breach of the moral law. But it is very singular 
that while the physical law has sometimes been 
broken through by God, the moral law has never. 
We never yet heard of an instance in the whole 
dispensation of God in which the breach of the 
moral law has escaped penalty. No man can deny 
he is a sinner. Let the leaves of memory be turned 
over in the quiet chamber — let the light of con- 
science be allowed to shine on these leaves, and 
men feel the force of what they often say, We 
have left undone those things which we ought to 
have done, and have done those things which we 
" ought not to have done." Thus we stand guilty of 
a breach of that moral law, which is never passed 
over without bringing down penalty. How are we 
to escape the penalty ? Is it possible for God to 
maintain in all its integrity the moral law, and yet 
to provide an exodus from the penalty of that law, 
for any of his sinful creatures ? It is so. The way 
is this. If an infinite compensatory ^offering can 



144 



T\'HAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



be found, God may forgive, and yet maintain the 
perfection of his law : he may insist on its penalties 
wherever applicable, and yet for those interested in 
this provision there may be provided an escape, in- 
finite and perfect. Christ, being siL'^ss, was not 
liable to the penalty of death on his own account. 
As God he was equal to satisfy every demand ; as man 
he was qualified to suffer every curse ; as God-man, 
therefore, he was able to satisfy and suffer, and thus 
make a perfect and complete atonement for the sins 
of all that believe. 

That Christ was God is proved by his saying that 
he had power to lay down his life, and power to take 
it up again. If a man lay down his life, he is a 
suicide. Like a sentinel placed on his beat, a man 
must traverse his round till the captain relieves him. 
But Christ had this power because he was also 
God, and in this lay infinite virtue. Men are all 
physically and by birth involved in Adam's ruin, but 
only by believing or trusting, or taking God at his 
word, can they be involved in the righteousness and 
recovered glory of 'the Second x\dam. The Atone- 
ment is infinite, perfect, and available for all that 
believe. Salvation is not incorporation into a Church, 
but a living union with a living Saviour. It is easy 
to make men ecclesiastics ; it needs omnipotent 
grace to make them Chiistians. There is plenty of 
Christianity in every sect, — there is too little 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



145 



Christianity in every one of us. TVliat is needed 
in the present day is less and less a fight for a 
Church, and more and more that we may be by 
grace true Christians. The best Christian woukl 
go to the best Church, and the real Christian will 
never join one that is verv^ far wrong. hat is 
meant by believing ? "We are apt to fancy that we 
have something to pay, or some time to wait, or 
something to suffer. All that is false. Salvation 
is instant pardon through the efficacy of the Atone- 
ment, at any time, for any one who looks to God 
through Christ. If we had anything to do, Christ's 
atonement w^ould not have been sufficient. The 
great law is, — instant welcome, instant pardon, in- 
stant and everlasting happiness — not by doing, suffer- 
ing, waiting, or praying ; but by accepting. There is 
election, but no reprobation. God has not fixed a 
decree which drives men to reprobation, but God has 
chosen some before the foundation of the world, not 
because he foresaw that they would be holy, but that 
they might be holy. 

None of the ills of life come from God. When 
anything sad has happened, people say, " It pleased 

God but w'hen anything good or bright happens, 
it was good luck," or " chance," &c. Let us love to 
see God in the sunshine, rather than in the shade, 
at bridals rather than burials, in the bounding 
heart rather than the broken heaii: : in bereavement 

L 



146 



^THAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



and sorrow we see what sin has done, and only a 
slight earnest of what it would do, did not relieving 
blessings arrest its terrible disorganization. By a 
beautiful law of divine prescription, our tears and 
our smiles, our sad hours and our bright ones, 
bring us equally to God in praise and prayer, which 
sweeten the one, and sanctify and sustain in the 
other. In that heaven prepared for the saints from 
the foundation of the world, and in everlasting fire 
as prepared, not for man, but for the devil and his 
angels, there is election in the first, but not repro- 
bation in the second. In the case of the saved, all 
the glory redounds to God, In the case of the lost, 
all the guilt rests on the sinners. The most awful 
recollection of the sinner will be this, " I find myself 
" where God never forced me. I did it all myself, and 
*'no decree of any sort drove me here.'' It is the 
sublime grandeur of the atonement that indicates it 
was no limited or temporary ruin from which we are 
saved. I cannot distinguish between the duration of 
eternal life on the one hand and of eternal punishment 
on the other. If hell be temporary, heaven must be 
so too, for the same adjectives are used in both 
instances. If v^^e dilute the sorrows of the lost, we 
are logically driven to dilute the life of the blessed. 
We cannot see how the punishment of the wicked 
can ever be exhausted, because they are ever sinning 
afresh. AYe cannot believe that the awful tragedy of 



WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? 



147 



the Cross would ever have taken place in order to 
relieve from a mere temporal evil. The Socinian 
most consistently denies the divinity of Christ, and 
the eternity of punishment ; nothing but an eternity 
of punishment would warrant the sufferings of an 
infinite Suiferer. 

..:Jt. ill 



I iaum n 
jod xii 

rr jiaol odi 'lo t 
£a:ioiw" ed-^ 1.. 



148 



VIL 

ANOTHER GOSPEL. 

Ix no state of ihe Cliristian Cliiircli was there abso- 
lute unity. How often is it flung in our face, you are 
all divided among each, otlier ! How frequently does 
tlie Cliurcli of Eome, as a most successful pretence 
in lier own favour, and a most powerful weapon 
^with which she can smite us, taunt us with the fact, 
which we admit to be a painful one, that there are 
divisions and disputes among Christians ! But I 
answer — and the argument is a fair one — If dis- 
putes in the Christian Church unchurch it now, 
disputes in the days of St. Paul must have un- 
churched it then also. For did not they say then, 
I am of Paul ; I am of Apollos ; I am of Cephas ?" 
Did not he tell them that that proved they were 
carnal? And if such divisions unchurch a com- 
munion, there never was a Church in the days 
of Paul. And the very Church, I may mention, 
that flings such disputes in our face, discreditable 
and sinful as they are ; but we must not make 
more of them or extort out of them consequences 
that are not logically and fairly deducible from 
them; — tliat flings such things in our face forgets 



AXOTPIEE GOSPEL. 



149 



that she has had her diTisions. She vrill ask 
Toii Trhere? Did not a perfect avalanche separate 
from that Church in the seventh century, constitut- 
ing at this day a body, the Greek Church, almost 
as numerous as herself? Did not a vast land- 
slip separate from her at the Eeformation ? Is not 
that evidence then that there have been separations 
there? But she answers, "Ah, laut vrhen people 
" separate from us vre denounce them.*' But that is 
not preventing separation ; it is only punishing it 
after it takes place : and to maintain that you are all 
unity because you brand them that separate, Tvould 
seem veiy much like the conduct of an inhabitant of 
London vs'ho should say, " There are no such ^^heno- 
" mena as pickpockets in London and if those to 
whom he said so were to quote the last police report, 
that half a dozen had been sent to Bridewell for that 
offence, his answer would be, " Quite true ; but you 

see we punish them the moment they commit 
" theft." Xow the Church of Eome just argues in 
the same way; she says, " There are no divisions 

amongst us." You quote half a dozen; she says, 
" Ah, but you see we punish them, imprison them, 
" burn them the moment they occur." But unity 
consists not fti punishing divisions, but preventing 
divisions. And therefore we come to the conclusion 
that there is no Church upon earth that has not 
divisions ; and we come also to the conclusion that 



]50 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



divisions may degrade a Cliiircli, but they do not 
imcliurcli or utterly destroy it. But when these di- 
visions come to be not simply disputes on ritual and 
ceremonial matters, but to be vital ones, then the 
division is dreadful indeed. You hear it fre- 
quently said we are accountable for Mormonism, for 
Socinianism, and for all those deadly errors that 
have sprung up in the last hundred years. We 
answer, they no more belong to us than they belong- 
to the Church of Eome. In the exercise of that 
freedom of conscience and liberty of speech which 
we accord to man, we will not put down by physical 
weapons the expression of moral sentiments. If we 
are to prevent heresy by force, we shall have to 
put every man in prison, or restore the Inquisition, 
or revive the system that was dominant in mediaeval 
times. But, notwithstanding the Pope's Allocution, 
neither will the nineteenth century bear that, nor 
ought it to bear it. And I am persuaded that in the 
full, free, unfettered discussion of all truth, such is 
the majesty of the everlasting Gospel, such and 
so brilliant are the credentials of the Bible, no 
man who thoroughly comprehends the one, and 
deeply feels the greatness of the other, will have 
one moment's doubt that the issue will be the tri- 
umphant evidence that this book has God for its 
Author, truth without any mixture of error for its 
matter, and eternal joy to man and glory to God for 



AXOTHER GOSrEL. 



151 



its ultimate and benenceiit results. But suppose 
now we lived in an age in which there are all 
sorts of disputes respecting not only the circumstan- 
tials, but the very essentials of the Gospel; what 
course are we to pursue in ascertaining what is truth ? 
The true course and the most successful is an appeal 
to God's holy word. I will show you the common 
sense of it. Suppose there had been left to you in a 
will an estate. Suppose lawyers, who make disputes 
often that they cannot mend, were to form different 
opinions respecting that estate. Suppose one party 
Vv-ere to come to you and say, It is a magnificent 

estate of some thousand acres, well wooded, well 
" watered, extremely beautiful, and rich in grand 

scenery." Suppose a second party were to come 
to you and say, It is a bleak, barren heath, with 

scarce a tree upon it, or a spring in its bosom?"' 
Suppose a third party were to come and say, It 
" consists of only a few acre^, with a few flocks of 

sheep, and very little pasture for them.'"' What 
would be your course ? AYould you bring all 
three together, and make them argue it out before 
3'ou ? Would you make them compare notes, and 
then draw an inference which was the most 
credible witness ? Xo ; certainly not. You would 
ask for the will. Produce the will that gives 
'-the estate, that describes the estate, its size, 
"rit^ contents, and its character;'' and you would 



152 



AXOTHEPv GOSPEL. 



bring all three reporters, not to confront eacli other, 
but to the law and to the testimony, to the original 
document, and see which speaks according to it. 
Xow it is just in the same way here ; one person 
says, The worship of the Virgin Mary is true 
another person says, " Jesus Christ is not God, but 
" is a mere man." Another says, "Justification by 
" faith was an invention or discovery of Martin 

Luther." Another says, " The deity of the Holy 
" Spirit is a myth, a figure of speech." ^Yhat is the 
right course ? Xot to go on discussing and com- 
paring the different commentators or critics upon the 
text ; but to open this book ; and he that speaks 
according to it, speaks truth ; he that speaks incon- 
sistently with it, let him speak in angel eloquence, 
speaks that which is another gospel, another Jesus, 
another Spirit, and not the Gospel of Christ. This 
is the very course that the apostle here prescribes. 
He says, " If we or an angel from heaven preach to 

you any other gospel, let him be anathema." Hoes 
not that assume that you can decide the matter ? 
Does not that assume that the Galatians had it in 
their power to discriminate, distinguish, and define ? 
To whom did he say so ? To a synod of Galatian 
ecclesiastics ? ^Vere they all bishops, all presbyters, 
all deacons to whom he addressed these words? 
Xo ; some were shopkeepers, some merchants, some 
lawyers, some physicians ? Then it was to the laity 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



153 



that he addressed these words. What does that 
prove? That the laity are capable of ascertain- 
ing what is the Gospel; that the laity can deter- 
mme by an appeal to the original what is an echo 
that indicates an original in heaven. If in the 
apostle's days, and amidst the lights of apostolic 
guiding, an apostle could appeal to lay people, and 
bid them test an apostle's preaching, surely an 
apostle's successor in the present day may appeal to 
the laity still, and say, ' ' If we preach any other 
" gospel, separate from iis, as we should be separated 
" from yon." 

-It is implied in this statement of the apostle, 
that the laity of that day must have had the Bible. 
They had not the whole Xew Testament, 1 admit, 
but they had the Old Testament, and they had 
a portion of the Xew then committed to writing. 
How can a man measure a house if he has no scale 
or rule by which to measure it ? How can you give 
a medicine and distinguish it from a poison, if you 
have no chemical test? In the same manner, how 
could they distinguish between apostolic preaching 
and apostate preaching, if they had no test and cri- 
terion by which to be guided ? Paul therefore as- 
sumes that they had the Bible. And if the Galatians 
had the -Bible, wh}^ not the English, the Irish, and 
the Scottish laity? Were Galatian laymen more 
talented than we? Where is the evidence of it? 



154 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



Had they as many facts to go upon as we ? They 
had fewer. We are more competent at this moment 
to come to a right conclusion about the meaning of 
the Bible, than the most illustrious and gifted of all 
the Fathers of the Kicene age. The real truth is, 
Augustine, Chrj^sostom, Basil, and Jerome, were the 
children of the Christian era • and Chalmers, and 
Henry, and Scott, are the ripe and experienced 
fathers of the Christian era; for these called the 
fathers had no history, no illustratiye discoveries, no 
great scientific and historic facts, by which to be 
guided ; but we have the very blunders of ClHysos- 
tom to save us from repeating them ; we have facts 
that he had not ; we have knowledge of phenomena 
in nature that he had not ; and therefore I assert 
that Henry or Scott, or an enlightened minister of 
the present day, is much more likely to arrive at a 
just idea of what is the meaning of God's word, than 
the most learned, gifted, or eloquent of all the 
fathers. At all events, an apostle submitted his 
teaching for discrimination or acceptance to the Gala- 
tian laity of his day ; and I cannot see on what pre- 
tence a successor of an apostle may refuse to submit 
his teaching, not to the prejudices, not to the passions, 
but to the honest and illuminated judgment of men 
who have the Bible in their hands, common sense in 
their heads, and the grace of God predominant in 
iheir hearts. 



A^^OTHER GOSPEL. 



155 



Another lesson comes out from tliis ; and it also is 
very instructive ; that not only had they the Bible, 
but, as the apostle assumes, the Bible was an intel- 
ligible book ; for how could they test the doctrine of 
preachers by a criterion they themselves did not 
understand? We have therefore the evidence, first, 
that the laity were competent to decide what is God's 
truth and what is not ; secondly, that they had the 
criterion by which to decide it, or the apostle's ap- 
peal was without meaning ; and, thirdly, that the 
criterion which they had was intelligible. If it 
should be argued they had not the whole Bible, that 
only strengthens my position ; for if they were able 
to discriminate deadly error from precious truth with 
a fragment of the Bible only in their possession, a 
fortiori^ we, who have Old and Xew Testament com- 
plete, are now more competent still, roh irrMp^Tf: 

The apostle thus appeals to the Galatian laity, 
and says, "If we or an angel from heaven preach 

any other gospel." Mark the distinction. If 
they had preached what w^as not worth preaching, 
any other form or ceremony, the apostle would not 
probably have quarrelled with that. ^'ay, the 
council that met at J erusalem — the first synod that 
ever met — decided not unifoimity, but unity in es- 
isbntials, with allowed difference in non-essentials. 
And the apostle therefore says, There must not be 
separation from a man who prefers a ceremony that 



156 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



we do not; bnt there must be unquestioning and 
unhesitating separation from him who preaches, not 
another chapel nor another ceremony, but another 
gospel. Forms vary like the clouds in the sky ; but 
the truths of the Gospel are like the fixed stars 
above them, immoveable for ever. The candle- 
stick may be in a thousand shapes, or in a thousand 
kinds of material ; but the light that bums in it 
must ever be kindled from the Fountain of light. 
The trumpet may be of varied bore, of varied size ; 
but it must give the same grand certain sound, 
Christ and Him crucified. AVe vrill forgive the 
greatest difference about the greatest ceremony, but 
we cannot endure dissent from a vital and essential 
truth. If you think episcopacy or presbyteiy is best, 
let us agree to differ. In the by-roads of ceremony 
and prophetic investigation, we may not be able to 
walk together ; but in the high and beaten road of 
common Christian truth, we are brethren notwith- 
standing, and fello^r-travellers still. In little things 
we may differ ; in great truths all that hope to be 
saved must substantially agTee. Give up the largest 
husk of prejudice or ceremony that will conciliate a- 
brother; but do not compromise the least living 
seed of eternal truth, if it were to make friends of 
all mankind. In ceremony be as latitudinarian as 
you like ; in essential truth, uncompromising to the 
utmost extent. The world that cannot distinguish 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



157 



tlie looseness witli wliicli you hold ceremony, and 
the firmness with which you hold vital truth, will 
denounce you as a bigot ; nevertheless you are not a 
bigot. A bigot is one that is ready to die for cere- 
mony ; a decided Christian is one that will not suffer 
for any ceremony, but will suffer death heroically 
for the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. Be conciliating 
to the very verge, but no further, of compromise ; 
give up -the largest difference in things non-essential ; 
but hold fast the least living truth that God has 
pronounced essential. The apostle, therefore, says 
it must be anathema only in the case in which there 
is preached another gospel, subverting or uuder- 
mining the essential truths that compose the Gospel 
of Christ Jesus. 

"What are some of these other gospels ? I might 
first of all sjDecify what was an early gospel altogether 
antagonistic to the truth — the Arian, or the Socinian, 
or, in its modern shape, the " Essays and Eeviews 
— the rationalistic heresy ; or that system which 
preaches, not a remedy, but a directory. The grand 
fault of that system is, that it assumes that man is 
well, and it tells him how he ought to walk, ignoring 
-the fact that man is without strength and without 
health ; that he is dead, and needs to be quickened 
'in order that he may walk. With this system of 
rationalism or Socinianism, the pulpit is a desk from 
which are snowed down cold lessons of morality like 



158 



AXOTHEK GOSPEL. 



snow-flakes ; with ns tlie pulpit is a place from 
whicb. leaves of liealing prescriptions are scattered 
for tliem that are diseased. In the one system Christ 
is an exquisite model ; in the other he is the model, 
indeed, but He is the Sacrifice, the Atonement, and 
the Saviour, first. With the Essay and Eevicw 
system the sanctuary is a school, an academy ; with 
us it is the hospital in which the sick assemble; 
and the minister of Christ, not the physician, but he 
w^hose lips with no uncertain sound should repeat, 
enforce, and unfold the grand prescription contained 
in the common pharmacopoeia, God's holy word. 
And therefore this is another gospel ; and not the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Another system that has been for some time .very 
popular, but that I trust is in some degree expiring, 
or rather finding its proper home, is Tractarianism. 
What is its character ? If it were that one loved a 
white gown rather than a black one, we would just 
say there is as much popery in the one as in the 
other ; that is to say, none at all ; or that one j)re- 
ferred standing to kneeling ; or that one preferred a 
bishop to a presbyter; these are comparative trifles. 
But this is not Tractarianism. The Church of England 
is not Tractarianism. I believe that sincerer Pro- 
testants than Cranmer, or Latimer, or Eidley, never 
preached from a pulpit upon earth. But what do I 
mean by Tractarianism ? I mean that system that 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



159 



throws the pulpit into a nook, and spreads the com- 
munion table with all the grandeur of medieval cir- 
cumstance. I mean that system that accounts him 
the best minister, not who preaches Christ most 
plainly, but who is the most perfect master of cere- 
monies. I mean that system which professes to 
renew the sacrifice of Jesus, which claims an altar 
for the Christian congregation, which places before 
it a sacrificing priest to make an atonement for the 
sins of the living, and occasionally, in some cases, for 
the dead. I mean that system which says justification 
by faith ought to be kept in the background, and the 
laity as mere serfs whom the priest is to teach when, 
where, how, and to what extent he likes ; and that 
for a woman to go into the holy chancel, is as when 
one of old tried to steal fire from the altar, to dese- 
crate the temple of the Most High ; that system 
which separates the priesthood from the people, which 
makes the service something offered for you, not 
something intelligently ofi'ered by you. I say that 
is another gospel that Paul did not know, of which, if 
he were living now, if we may judge from the senti- 
ments embodied in his eloquent and inspired epistles, 
he would have said, If any man preach such a 
" gospel to you, let him be anathema." 

This system gains power from " The Essays and 

Ee views," indirectly but surely. 

I might mention also Tractarianism in its ultimate 



160 



A>^OTHER GOSPEL. 



and perfect development, the Churcli of Eome. 
Eyerybody saw long ago — I warned vou at the time — 
that no man holding the peculiar sentiments of the 
school of divines I have alluded to, could ever stop 
where they were. They are on an inclined plane, 
and they must either go down or retrace their steps. 
They themselves knovr that feelings are generated 
by that system that the system itself cannot satisfy. 
"What is taking place in Scotland ? I ascertained my- 
self that hundreds of those who have worshipped in 
Scotch Episcopal chapels where Puseyism was taught 
before Dr. Pusey was born, have had generated a 
craving for something that those chapels and that 
system are unable to supply ; and the consequence 
is, that persons of distinction, of whom better things 
were hoped, beguiled, deceived, deluded (for Satan 
himself is transformed into an angel of light), have 
joined the Eoman Catholic Church. And most 
certainly, if the choice were, Shall I go to Ptome 
or remain in the Tractarian system ? I should cer- 
tainly go to Eome, because, if I want the thing done 
perfectly I must go to Pio None for it : the exhibi- 
tion in Tractarian chapels is the shabby imitation of 
a magnificent thing. Eomanism is a grand thiug, a 
very impressive thing : it is not a true thing : but 
all the mimicry of it that ceiiain divines have peq3e- 
trated, is a very poor and paltry acting of a gTand 
pla}^, performed by first-rate actors in the gTeat opera 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 161 

of the Eoman Catholic community. Xoav these are 
other gospels from which I am sure, if Paul were 
living now, he would tell those that listened to his 
words to separate. 

To take one other delusion : you are aware that 
there has sprung up in the great districts oF Ame- 
rica, that once great, and powerful, and promising 
land — a land with which God forbid we should ever 
be at war — for I could conceive nothing more horrible 
than the mother at war with her own child ; in that 
country in which I believe there is a living, pure, 
and. noble theology, and whose divines are many of 
them outstripping and excelling ours — jlormonism 
to a prodigious extent. And if you ask these persons 
on what ground they advocate these things, they will 
tell you that they have got another revelation, that 
they have got another communication from heaven. 
The answer to that is, if they have, they must be 
able to show some credentials of it. It will not do 
for the founder of the Mormons to say, '* I have got 
" a certain communication from heaven." If a man 
come and^ say he has, though I will hear his proofs 
with suspicion, unable to forget the solemn statement 
at the close of Eevelation, " If any man shall add unto 
" these things, God shall add unto him the plagues 
" that are written in this book ;" still, if a man say, 

I have a communication from heaven," at least out 
of courtesy, if not out of duty, let us listen to him; 

M 



162 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



If lie show me miracles tliat prove omnipotent power 
holding lip lights that lead me to happiness and to 
God, then he has the credentials of an apostle ; but 
if he can show me no miracle that proves an omni- 
potent presence, and if he teach me doctrines which 
are incompatible with what God has sealed, and sanc- 
tioned, and owned by the most unequivocal and un- 
questionable proofs, I must say to such a one, I 
must separate from you and you from me let 
him be anathema. I maintain that no man can bring 
forth another gospel except by a direct communica- 
tion from heaven. AYhat is a revelation ? Something 
that God gives. What is a discovery? Something 
that man makes. For instance, America is a dis- 
covery ; and a child in any day-school knows more 
about America than Columbus or Americus knew 
about it when they first discovered it. What man 
discovers man can mend ; but what God reveals, 
God alone can add to. And, therefore, those doc- 
trines that are asserted to be true, if discoveries, 
their origin is in man, and with man they die; 
if revelations, they must show their credentials as 
such. But they have no credentials that will bear 
a moment's impartial analysis, and therefore the 
irresistible conclusion is, they are the offspring of 
fanaticism, they rise from the marshes of ignorance 
and error ; from man they are, and with man they 
die; they constitute another gospel, with which 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



163 



you can have no communion or connexion what- 
ever, -la: biix hf^'-:i imit eiiduji qur 'gaibiou 
. . Let us mark what the apostle says on this subject : 
*Mf we or an angel from heaven preach another 
gospel." I wish you to weigh well these words. 
He says an angel from heaven may preach another 
gospel. What is an angel used to represent in the 
New Testament ? Great eloquence. He says in the 
Epistle to the Corinthians, If I speak with the 
v tongue of angels." But what does this show ? 
That great eloquence may be arrayed on the side 
of error ; that gifted men may be its advocates ; 
that just as Solomon had the highest wisdom, and 
yet became a sensualist ; as Samson had the greatest 
strength, and yet became the serf and the slave of 
a corrupt woman; so great genius, splendid elo- 
quence, the power of words and utterance, may be 
desecrated to the support of deadly and destructive 
error. And therefore if an angel were to come 
speaking in angel strains, if he speak not the words 
of everlasting truth, let his eloquence be to you 
as the tinkling cymbal and the sounding brass, or 
the noise of the idle wind that men regard not. 
But the apostle shows that not only may great 
eloquence be allied to the side of great error, but 
that great moral excellence may be allied to the 
side of error. His language implies that great moral 
^orth may be enlisted on the side of delusion. If he 



164 



AJs^OTHER GOSPEL. 



said, If an angel from tlie depths of hell were to 
" ascend from its burning floors, and were to speak in 
defence of deadly and pestiferous error, let him be 
anathema there would perhaps be no great peril ; 
but he assumes that an angel from heaven, radiant 
with its glory, breathing all its holiness, marked by 
all its excellence, may be the advocate of another 
gospel and of deadly error. And in the present day, 
are there not many men of unquestionable moral 
worth who have become the devotees and the advo- 
cates of most deadly error ? Who more amiable and 
upright than the late Archdeacon Manning ? Who 
more outwardly consistent than Dr. Newman? 
Satan is too clever to select bad men to do his ablest 
work ; he selects men who have standing, who have 
some outward moral consistency, to be the favourite 
and the too successful tools in dishonouring God and 
ruining souls. If, therefore, the best of men that 
ever breathed, the most consistent, the most amiable, 
were to be the advocates of what is contrary to this 
blessed book, we are warranted in saying, " Let 
him be anathema." Nay, the apostle says, as if to 
show you how far men may go in the advocacy of 
error, If we." What does he mean by that? We, 
the recent convert at Damascus ; we, once struck 
blind by the intolerable glory ; we, who have soared 
to the third heaven ; we, who could shake off the 
fiery poisonous serpent from our hands ; we, who 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



165 



have been in perils by the sea, in perils among false 
bretliren, in hunger, and nakedness, and thirst ; if we 
were so deserted by God as to preach to you what is 
contradicted by this book, even of each of us, the 
apostles, you would be warranted in saying, Let 

him be anathema." And therefore, my dear friends, 
all eloquence, all moral worth, all that man applauds, 
and justly applauds, must never be suffered to be an 
apology for that which dishonours God and ruins 
souls ; another Jesus, another Spirit, another gospel. 

" Let such a one be anathema." What does that 
mean ? The word means separation ; it does not 
mean burn him, imprison him, or curse him. It does 
not mean abuse him, caricature him, deride him, 
insult him. But it does mean separate from him, 
leave him in the hands of God, leave him to the 
issues of his own tenets; try to undeceive him if 
you can ; pray for him whilst you have opportunity ; 
but separate from him, and let him be separate from 
you. And what does all this imply ? That no pre- 
ference of a system must make you adopt the errors 
of that system. If, for instance, in the Church that I 
prefer, whose principles and polity I like best ; if in 
the parish church that I know, and in which I have 
worshipped from childhood, there were to be preached 
another gospel, another Sj)irit, another Jesus ; and 
if on the opposite side of the street there were 'to be 
the humblest Wesleyan or Baptist meeting-house, in 



166 



ANOTHEE GOSPEL. 



wliich the most illiterate of men were to preacii JesnF 
Clirist and him cracified in all his gloiy, I would 
turn my back upon the parish chui'ch that I lore, 
and I would worship in the meeting-house that I do 
not like ; not that I love my parish church less, but 
that I love the Gospel more. By all means giye me 
bread in a silyer basket ; but rather pure bread in a 
wooden trencher than poisoned bread in the most 
exquisitely chased silyer or golden basket. \^']ien 
the question is Hying bread or deadly error, the 
Gospel of Christ or another gospel, I care not for the 
form : I must despise the difference of ceremony ; I 
must go where I can haye bread. Lord, eyer- 
more giye us this bread !" 

From the whole of this we see what an eyil thins; 
it is in the authors of " Essays and Eeyiews to cor- 
rupt the Gospel. The painter that fails, only spoils 
a piece of canyas ; the sculptor that fails, only destroys 
a piece of marble ; but the preacher or wiiter who is 
untrue to his mission, undutiful to his God, ruins 
souls, and dishonours the blessed Sayiour. And, 
secondly, you see what your duty is. "Whilst you 
are not to come to the house of prayer as carping 
critics to find fault with the defects or to idolize the 
excellencies of the preacher, yet you are to judge 
whether what you hear be in confonnity with what 
you haye read. If I say one word which has not its 
echo in this blessed book, the highest compliment 



ANOTHER GOSPEL. 



167 



you can pay me is to forgive, forget, and despise it. 
But if I say one truth, that has its foundation in this 
l30ok, then it is your solemn responsibility to mark, 
learn, and in^vardly digest it ; feeling that while the 
ambassador delivers fully and faithfully his message, 
be that rejecteth him rejecteth God. 



uoi it 
edi ©J- 

a)i ion 
tosmil 



168 



VIII. 

WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

In successive Lectures I have tried to show hov/ 
untenable are the objections that have been adduced 
against the inspiration, the consistency, and the 
claims of God's holy word. In this, instead of treat- 
ing the subject in the least degree controversially, I 
would try to set before you the excellencies of that 
book, which is full of the ancient past, rich in 
lessons for the busy present, and that reveals from 
its gleaming page all the splendours of that magnifi- 
cent future in which all past ages will be glorified 
and crowned. 

This book is called in one passage " the hol}^ 
"Scriptures;" it is called in other passages "the 

word of God it is named in popular phraseolog}" 
the Bible. The very first question that is suggested — 
not because Christians need to be enlightened here, 
but that every man should be able to give a reason 
for the faith that is in him, and that we should all 
see on what strong foundations rests the charter of 
our hopes ; and how wise, and how sensible, and how 
consistent are those who bring all their questions, 
their doubts, their trials, their difficulties in religion 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



169 



to that book wliicli speaks with the clearness of an 
oracle, and all the inspiration of the living and the 
true God — is, what is the Bible? It is literally the look ; 
and as such it begins with Genesis and ends with the 
Apocalypse ; Genesis the programme of the future, 
the Apocalypse the last fulfilment of that large and 
magnificent programme. It begins with Genesis, 
the first book of the Pentateuch, with all its interest- 
ing instruction on the origin of our earth, and its 
arrangement for the existing dynasty that is on it ; 
the changes through w^hich it has passed, and the 
early history of those who play their busy part upon 
its surface. It contains the Psahns, or those beau- 
tiful songs that have been sung in the Temple, and 
on the plains of Shinar. ^Yherever the Jew tra- 
velled, or built a synagogue, there he found a Psalm 
wdth which to unload his heart, and to praise and 
magnify the Lord God of Israel. We have the pro- 
phecies, that relate to the future of Israel, and 
the future of the Gentile nations ; and the final 
triumphs and glories of Him who is Prophet, Priest, 
and King. The Old Testament occupies a period in 
its history of at least 4000 years ; then w^e have the 
New Testament ; first the Four Gospels, written by 
the Evangelists, containing the biography of Him 
who lived as never man lived ; then the inspired 
ecclesiastical history, called the Acts of the Apostles ; 
meant to give us an idea how the a]30stles carried 



170 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



into practice tlie functions with whicli ihej were 
invested as ambassadors of tlie Lord Jesns Christ. 
Then we have the Epistles, originated very much in 
the objections that were urged against the Gospel, or 
the difScnlties that Christians felt in their interpre- 
tation of that Gospel. The Epistle to the Eomans 
teaches the great doctrine that we are justified by 
faith alone in the righteousness of Christ alone, irre- 
spective of deeds of law or works of righteousness, 
which have no place as merit in the title-deeds of 
our eternal inheritance. We have in the Galatians, 
the reply to those Jews who mixed up Christianity 
with Judaism, and endeavoured to teach that we 
are justified partly by what Paul taught, Christ's 
righteousness ; but partly also by conformity to the 
J ewish law ; and the apostle in that magnificent 
Epistle proves and demonstrates, with a logic not 
less conclusive because it is inspired, that if you 
admit into partnership with Christ any rite, or into 
partnership with his righteousness any ceremony, 
you make void the whole. You must make Christ 
alone your title to heaven ; or you must take the law 
and brave the issues. He trod the wine-press alone ; 
he had all the sorrow, and he claims what is his due, 
all the glory of your everlasting deliverance. Then 
we have the Epistle to the Hebrews — to pass over 
others — full of most instructive information on the 
significance and meaning of those rites and cere- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



171 



monies T^'hicli in themselves seem tmworthy of God ; 
but which, read in the light and splendour of the 
New Testament, appear to be full of rich and precious 
instruction. And lastly, you have the Apocal^-pse, 
or the revelation of the things that were, in the 
history of the Seven Churches of Asia ; the things 
that were to be ; and finally the picture, taken from 
the original, of that new Jerusalem that cometh 
down from heaven ; that bride who has made herself 
ready for the Bridegroom ; that future glory into 
which, as into a peaceful and a happy bay, all the 
troubled surf of this world shall roll, and be at rest 
and peace for ever. Such is The Book ; written, I 
may mention, as this book is, by forty different 
writers, containing sixty different treatises. Some 
of the writers were kings, some herdsmen, some 
fishermen, some physicians, some philosophers, some 
poets : their writings were some of them histories, 
some of them proverbs, some of them songs, some of 
them prophecies, some of them gospels, and some of 
them epistles ; but take them altogether, stretching 
aver a period of nearly two thousand years ; different 
men, vnth different tastes, under different regimes, 
accustomed to different circumstances, speaking 
different tongues, occupying different levels in social 
life ; and when you read them, the marvellous har- 
mony that runs through all indicates the key-note 
was struck in heaven, and that the harmony is the 



172 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



result of the inspiration of Him wlio has told lis that 
"all Scripture is given by inspiration of God." 

Having given this brief sketch of what the book 
is, let me state what this book excludes. There 
are certain books you have all heard of, called 
the Apocrypha, that are sometimes bound up with 
English Bibles, and on certain saints ' days, some 
lessons from the Apocrypha are read in the English 
Church ; but the Article of the English Church, it is 
but right to say, declares distinctly, that if an apo- 
cryphal lesson be read — I think it is a pity it should 
be read at all, but that is a matter of taste ; — if an 
Apocryphal lesson be read, it is read as a human 
composition ; that it is not inspired by the Spirit of 
God. So far, there can be no mistake. But you ask, 
why is the Apocrypha retained at all ? What is the 
meaning of it ? what is the history of it ? Is it, in 
any sense, a portion of the word of God ? I answer, 
it is not ; the Article in the Church of England most 
justly defines it not to be so. You ask for evidence 
that it is not; because a very powerful, at least a 
once powerful branch of professing Christendom — I 
mean the Eomish Church — alleges that the Apocry- 
pha, the Book of Esdras, for instance ; the Book of 
Bel and the Dragon ; the two Books of Maccabees, 
and the Book of Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom of 
Solomon, are as much inspired as the Prophets, or the 
Gospels, or the Epistles of the New Testament. It 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



173 



is their duty to give proof of this. We say tliey are 
not inspired, and it is our duty to show on what 
ground we refuse to accept the conclusion of a large, 
though very imperfect and very erring branch of 
professing Christendom. The answer w^e give is 
this : it is stated expressly by the inspired penman 
that to the Jews were intrusted the oracles of God. 
The Jewish nation was raised up for a specific 
mission ; that mission was to maintain in all its 
purity God's holy word as it is embodied in the Old 
Testament Scriptures. Our Saviour accused the 
Jews of making void the Scri]3tures by their tradi- 
tions ; he accused them of not reading the Scriptures ; 
but he never once accused them of mutilating, per- 
verting, or subtracting from the Scripttires. In fact, 
with whatever sins the Jewish nation was chargeable, 
they were exempt from the great sin of daring to 
tamper with the inspired word of God. If this was 
their mission, and this specific mission thej nationally 
fulfilled, did they accept the books that we call the 
Apocrypha? They did not. Every Eabbi, every 
Jew to this day, believes the Apocrypha to be as 
much inspired as the novels of Sir Walter Scott, or 
as the poetry of Shakspeare, or Milton ; that is, not 
inspired at all. That alone would be to me almost a 
conclusive disproof of the claims of these books to be 
inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. But more than 
that, the whole Old Testament Scripture is written 



174 



^VHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



in that noble language, the Hebre^v ; the apocry- 
phal books, every one of them, are ^\Titten in the 
Greek tongue. I do not say that this is disproof of 
their inspiration : but we surely need some reason 
why the whole Bible was written in Hebrew, and 
these books which are in question were not written 
in the language of the people to whom they strictly 
and properly belong. A third reason against the 
apocryphal books being inspired is this, that they 
are never — though this alone would be inconclusive^ 
because it might be omission — once quoted or re- 
feiTed to in the whole New Testament, from the 
commencement of Matthew to the close of the Apo- 
calypse. We have references to Moses, references 
to the prophets, references to the Psalms; but not 
one solitaiy reference to any one of the books that 
we call apocryphal. I may add the strong evidence 
that they are uninspired, that these books contain 
doctrines that are not Christian. For instance, one 
of the books says — and this is a favourite text quoted 
always in the Church of Eome ; and if you have tra- 
velled on the Continent of Europe you must often 
have seen in its magnificent cathedrals, which one 
cannot but admire and wish to re-echo with the 
accents of a purer and a nobler worship, a huge 
begging box, sometimes inside, occasionally at the 
doors of the churches, under sculpture, in bas-relief, 
of men struggling in the flames of purgatory ; and 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



175 



written upon that begging box a text from one of 
the apocryphal books : ''It is a holy and wholesome 
" thing to pray for the dead." Thus, they find a 
reason for purgatory, and for praying the sufferers 
out of purgatory, in the apocryphal books, but there 
alone they find it. But another disproof of inspira- 
tion is in one of the books of Maccabees, where it is 
said of an illustrious soldier that he fell upon his 
sword, preferring to die a noble death than to fall 
into the hands of his enemies ; in other words, com- 
mending suicide. But the most conclusive disproof 
of the inspiration of these books is found in the last 
verses of the book of Maccabees ; where the writer 
of the book says, " These things if I have done well, 
*' it is what I desired ; but if not so perfectly it must 
*'be pardoned me." Can you conceive an inspired 
writer begging pardon for the errors into which he 
has fallen in the course of the composition of the 
things that were intrusted to his charge ? So that 
we say, and I think with perfect justice, that these 
books, however excellent — and there is much in them 
beautiful, much poetical; and there is instructive 
history in them too — are not part and parcel of the 
word of God ; and ought not to be received by 
any man as conveying the mind of God. I may 
add another reason, which perhaps may not be so 
conclusive with us ; and that is, that I have read all 
the catalogues of the canonical books given by those 



176 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



who are called Fathers, or the Greek and Latin 
writers of the first five centuries of the Christian 
era ; and with the exception of one book, Y/hich one 
or two of them are disposed to accept, namely, the 
Book of Esdras, thej reject the apociyphal books. 
And then what is very remarkable, not very con- 
clusive to us, but most important to a member of 
the Eoman Catholic Church, Gregory the Great, who 
lived in the 7th century, a man of great power, 
great talent, and probably the founder of the ex- 
tremest pretensions of the papacy, said, " A story 
is related, in the Book of Maccabees, which, though 
not canonical — that i"s he denies that the Book of 
Maccabees is canonical. ISow the present Pope says 
the Book of Maccabees is canonical : both Popes are 
infallible: we Protestants are not called upon to 
solve the inextricable controversy that it must in- 
volve ; it must rest with our Eoman Catholic friends 
to settle how both can be infallible, while the one 
directly and distinctly contradicts the other. These 
then are the reasons that lead me to the conclusion 
that the books called the Apocrypha are not inspired, 
or part and parcel of the word of God. 

" All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." 
First, it is evidence that the Scripture is written. I 
need not tell you that the Greek word so translated 
is ypa077, derived from a verb to vmte ; and means 
that which is written. Now sometimes you hear that 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 177 

there was no command to write tlie Scriptures ; but 
the fact that they are written is eyidence that the 
apostles were authorized to do so ; or surely they 
would not have done it. I do not know a more pre- 
cious fact in the transmission of the sacred volume 
than this — that it is written. Had it been left to 
oral transmission, it would have been perverted into 
something else. We have evidence of this in the 
days before the Flood : there was no written Bible 
then ; and though it can be shown that jSToah, 
Methuselah, and Adam must have been linked 
together ; that is, Methuselah must have seen Adam, 
and must have seen Xoah ; and therefore the steps 
down which the doctrine was to be transmitted were 
very few; yet in the course of these three genera- 
tions all flesh had corrupted its way, a false and 
perverted worship was introduced, and God's judg- 
ments overtook a world that had lost all memorials of 
him and the word that he had spoken to mankind. 
We have another very striking proof of the tendency 
of mere tradition to perveii: words originally spoken. 
It is at the close of the Gospel of John, where Peter, 
seeing John, said to the Lord, " What shall this man 
" do ?" a question Peter had nothing to do with ; but 
Peter was one of those hot, hasty, ill-tempered men 
— for such he was before the day of Pentecost — who 
was always first to speak, first to strike, and, like 
some men of that type, the first, when frightened, to 



178 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



run away. Well, Peter put tlie question, What 
shall this man do?" Jesus said to him, *'If," — 
mark the words; — "If I will that he tarry till I 
" come, what is that to thee ?" — what rich sense is in 
that ! — " follow thou me." Is ow, mark what follows ; 
" Then," — now here is the tradition, — " Then went 
" this saying abroad among the brethren, that that 
" disciple should not die." Jesus said, If I will," 
— he put it hypothetically ; but it was tortured into a 
tradition that John should never die. But mark 
how beautifully the written Scripture corrects the 
oral tradition! "Yet Jesus said not unto him, He 
" shall not die ; but if I will that he tarry till I 
" come, what is that to thee ?" We have here at the 
very earliest period an instance of oral tradition 
grossly perverting the original words of our Lord. 
What a blessed thought, that we have the Bible 
written, a stereotype, an immutable fixture ! The 
clouds of dissensions, controversies, disputes, like the 
clouds in the sky, may assume a thousand shapes ; 
but the texts of the Bible, like the stars high above 
the clouds, remain clear, and bright, and beautiful 
for ever. Let us thank God, therefore, that we are 
not dependent on oral tradition ; but that we have 
all Scripture, or all his word, written ; the written 
word. rrorojft. 

The Bible, as already noticed, is a revelation. 
Two words are constantly confounded in common 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



179 



conTersation : a discovery and a revelation. A dis- 
covery is something that man makes ; a revelation 
is something that God gives. James Watt discovered 
the steam-engine ; but it has been immensely im- 
proved since. Columbus discovered America ; but a 
child in our schools Jinows more about America now 
than Columbus knew then, What man discovers 
man can improve by subsequent investigation. But 
the Bible is not a discovery, it is a revelation; it 
comes down in all its perfection from the throne of 
God; man can receive it, man may mar it, but man 
cannot mend it; God has given it in its perfection, 
and it is our privilege, as it is our duty, to keep it 
in all the splendour of its first kindling ; and use its 
bright light as a lamp to our feet, to light us thi'ough 
the paths of time into the rest that remaineth for the 
people of God. 

It is also, as we have seen, inspired. I do not 
know a more expressive word that can be employed 
'to denote or to exhaust the full importance of this 
book than the word "the Oracle;'"' i. e., a living 
communication from God himself. If there be differ- 
ent styles, how can you justify the assertion that all 
these writers are equally inspired by the Spirit of 
God ? The answer to my mind is as simple as satis- 
factory ; when God selected a writer by whom to 
convey his mind to the Church and to mankind, he 
did not annihilate the idiosyncrasies, peculiarities, 





ISO 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



and taste of the man ; but he consecrated and in- 
spired alL He did not, for instance, take John, and 
Peter, and Panl, and James, and lay them npon 
what I may call a moral Procrustes' bed, and chop 
them all after one model; but he took each, re- 
taining his human peculiarities, and making him, 
the man John; him, the man Peter, the organ by 
which he made known his 'will to the world and 
to mankind. That this is perfectly compatible with 
truth is obvious from a very simple illustration : 
a note in music may be rendered perfectly by dif- 
ferent instruments. Take, for instance, the note 
A ; if I put the two fingers of my left hand 
upon a flute, I sound the note A ; if I touch the 
second string of a violin, I sound the note A ; if I 
touch a key on a piano, I sound the note A ; if I 
touch another l^ej on an organ. I sound that note ; 
if I take a tnimpet, I can give that note. Each 
instrument retains its peculiar and distinctive sound, 
and yet from each instrument the note is produced 
in all its perfection and completeness. ^Yhen you 
hear the note on a violin, it is the same note as 
that which you hear from the flute ; but you never 
fail to distinguish the one from the other; and 
yet the note A is produced from the flute just as 
perfectly as it is produced from the violin. So it is 
with the sacred penmen ; you can distinguish the 
style of John from the style of James; the style of 



V^'RXT IS THE BIBLE? 



181 



James from tlie style of Paul, and the style of Paul 
from the style of Peter ; and yet each, breathed into 
by God, may and does produce those grand notes that 
constitute together the harmony of truth, the pre- 
lude of those joys that are at God's right hand, and 
of those pleasures that are for evermore. Thus 
we see the objection arising from variety of style 
is not a tenable objection; and that these men, as 
individuals, were each inspired by the Spirit of 
God ; and that it is still true, " All Scripture is 
" given by inspiration of God." 

All Scripture given by inspiration of God " is 
profitable ;" "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
"for correction, for instruction in righteousness; 
" that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
" furnished unto all good works." Let me notice an 
interesting feature at the loth verse of the third 
chapter of 2nd Timothy ; he says to Timothy, 
" From a child thou hast known the holy Scrip- 
tures." Then Timothy, the child, was taught to 
read, and so far to understand his Bible. If the 
child Timothy was taught and understood something 
of the Bible eighteen hundred years ago, is the 
child William, the child Thomas, the child Henry, 
the child John, incapable of understanding, and 
should each be forbidden to read the Scriptures now ? 
Children are not one whit different to-day from what 
they were in the days of the Apostle Paul ; and if it 



182 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



was a duty to teacli children the Scriptures then, 
snrelyit cannot cease to be a duty now; for children 
are not nearer heaven to-day than they were then, 
nor more enlightened in the nineteenth century than 
they were in the first century of the Christian era. 
But there is a very important thought suggested by 
that text, *'From a child thou hast known the Scrip- 
tures." Yrho was Timothy's schoolmaster — I will 
not say schoolmaster ; — who was Timothy's school- 
mistress ? His teachers were his grandmother Lois 
and his mother Eunice : and the evidence that this 
was the school and these were the teachers is in the 
5th verse of the first chapter of this very epistle ; 
where he says, " Vs'hen I call to remembrance the 
unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first 
" in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice." 
Here is the apostolical succession ; but it is aposto- 
lical succession from a mother and a grandmother, 
not from an apostle. He says here, " Y'hen I call 
to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in 
thee, which dwelt first in thy gi'andmother Lois, 
and thy mother Eunice ; and I am persuaded that 
" in thee also." Well, if a Christian grandmother 
and a Christian mother were so eflective instructors 
of a child then, that that child became an evangelist 
and an illustrious ambassador from God, and a bene- 
factor to mankind ; are grandmothers and mothers " 
incompetent, or are they unwilling in the yeai^ 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



183 



1861? Here, too, we have a very remarkable pre- 
cedent : Timothy was taught the Scriptures as a 
child ; and that these Scriptures are intelligible. 
We are told by the learned writers to w^hom I have 
referred that they are very obscure, and very con- 
tradictory ; mere assertions, I may remark, for which 
they have given no proof whatever ; and where 
they attempt proof, it breaks do^Ti the moment you 
begin to dissect it. These Scriptures are able to 
make you wise to salvation. Well, if the Bible w^as 
able to make a child, able to make an evangelist, 
wT.se unto salvation, it is able still, depend upon it. 
The Bible has not parted with its power ; its lessons 
have not lost their living energy ; in this sacred 
volume there is a force, a depth, a glory, that we 
have not exhausted ; like a deep ocean, he that dives 
oftenest and deepest will bring up the most precious 
and beautiful pearls to adorn and beautify the bride 
preparing for the bridegroom. They are able to 
make thee wdse unto salvation. But it has been 
urged by some, that the reference here is to the Old 
Testament ; and that Timothy's grandmother and 
mother only had the Old Testament. Let me grant 
it ; if the Old Testament was able to make Timoth}^ 
wdse unto salvation, d fortiori the Old and Xew 
Testament together ; and instead of disproving the 
sufficiency of the Bible, it positively casts more light 
upon it. Xay, more, it adds, in the last verse, " That 



184: 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



" the man of God may be perfect tliat is the result 
of Bible reading; thoronghly furnished unto all 
" good works." The only objection I have heard to 
the last verse is that made by Doctor Wiseman ; he 
says that the man of God means the priest or the 
minister ; and that, therefore, we have no right to 
quote this as evidence that the Scriptures are able to 
make a layman wise unto salvation. But this logic 
is not just; I think mine is fairer; namely, that if 
the Bible be able to make a priest, a bishop, a car- 
dinal, wise unto salvation, surely it is sufficient to 
make 2^oor lay people wise unto salvation. If it can 
accomplish the greater and the more magnificent 
issue, surely it is competent to accomplish the lesser 
result, of making a poor child, a grandmother, a 
mother, a working man, wise unto salvation. 

I have thus given some account of that precious 
book, the word of God. I have not touched on 
its contents. Let us think, without entering on 
its interior contents, of the irresistible proofs that 
it has had of special providential power and protec- 
tion over it. Great nations have withered down 
to their roots ; illustrious capitals, shrines, and 
altars have been broken, and scattered to the 
winds ; and of the priests that officiated by the 
altars, and the architects that built the temples, the 
very names have perished from the memories of 
mankind ; but this book remains in all the splendour 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



185 



of its first kindling. Classic T^'riters have come 
down to ITS mutilated, corrupted, till nations offer 
thousands for a lost hook of Livy : hut this hook 
retains all its original perfection ; tou have it as it 
was handed down from the hands of apostles, from 
the hands of martyrs, pure, inspired, perfect, suffi- 
cient to make wise unto salyation. Xor does this 
hook pause in its magnificent march ; it is at this 
moment spreading over all Italy: and the suhjects of 
him who professes to he the chief priest and minister 
of Christendom told him xery recently that the 
Italian Bihle is coming in at one gate of Eome, and 
that his Holiness had hetter escape hy the other; 
that these two never can live in the same city, 
much less in the same cathedral. This glorious 
hook is spreading through Italy ; it is saturating the 
heautifal provinces of France with its living light, 
its imperishahle salt. It is crossing hroad seas ; it 
climhs steep mountains : it is found in the gallant 
soldier's knapsack : it may he detected heneath the 
sailor's restless pillow ; it has a wing that never 
wearies ; it is not numhed amid Polar snows ; it is 
not relaxed heneath the fervours of equatorial 
suns. It enters the cahin of the poor, and tells 
him of a house not made with hands; of One 
who is unseal chahle riches: it enters the palace 
and the liall of the nohle, and tells them, " The 
earthly h.use of this tahernacle must he dis- 



186 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 



'* solved." The words of kings, philosopliers, and 
poets liave perished ; the words of the fishermen 
of Galilee ring louder and sweeter in the tongues of 
Christendom every day ; as if to demonstrate to man- 
kind how transient is all that man calls great — how 
lasting is the least word that God pronounces true ! 



THE END. 



LONrON; PKINTED BY WILLIAM CLOTVES AND SONS, STAMrORD STREET. 



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